Democracy or Not To Be

Today the question of what countries are democracies was purposed in class. Normally when one thinks of a example of democracy the United States is the the strongest example. Is this because the United States is seen as the first modern democracy, or is it nationalistic pride? So when I followed the link given by Professor Gelbman on her blog. I found it necessary that I needed to scroll down just about a page lengths down from the top of the list to find the United States ranking in at seventeen. With a short investigation to why Sweden to here is first I found that Sweden like England is run by King Carl XVI Gustaf. This means that instead of following the United States model another model had to have been followed. Also to my surprise according to the ranking chart out of all the Full Democratic states the United States has the lowest civil liberty value. While on the idea of I was reminded of this article from the BBC about bloggers being arrested. To end here is a quote from the BBC article.
"The report predicted that the number of blogger arrests in 2008 would exceed the 36 seen in 2007 thanks to greater popularity of blogging as a medium, greater enforcement of net restrictions, and elections in China, Pakistan, Iran and the US."



For those who do not like clicking on hyperlinked items links are given in the order they appear:
http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/DEMOCRACY_INDEX_2007_v3.pdf
http://pol106.blogspot.com/
http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/2853/a/21785
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7456357.stm