The democratic world according to LocalParty.Org

The term democracy is generally used for a broad range of electoral formats, but the collective term of democracy used here describes only the specific form of equal representation. On this map, all nations are shown only when they deliver some level of equal representation. Nations with the pure winner-takes-all system (district elections) do not fall under this banner, because almost 40% of their voters do not receive representation; these voters do not have equal representation.

The picture shows three versions of equal representation in the world. The first form shows those nations that make the voters' choice be the only vote that matters. As you can see, the majority of these nations are found in Europe (but not exclusively). The second form of equal representation is taken up by nations with proportional elections that have presidential elections also. As is obvious, presidential elections are never proportional: they are a version of winner-takes-all, and should therefore be considered a specific mix of proportional and district elections. Central-American, South-American and African nations tend to have this form of democracy — if they have proportional representation. The third level of equal representation is taken in by those nations with a peculiar use of proportionality: people vote for their representatives in districts, but some importance to equal representation is then given as well. For instance, when a nation votes for more than one representative per single district, or when the end results of the districts are adjusted afterwards to include the overall vote as well, that nation is shown in blue. Important nations in this category are: Germany, Japan, Australia. Sources used to compile the following graphs in 2005: CIA World Factbook, Worldpolicy.org, NationMaster.com , and WPmap. As disclaimer, not all nations may deliver in reality what on paper is their official governmental format.

Of course the images dealing with finance and wealth distribution are most interesting to view in respect to the political systems in place. The outcomes tell us which system distributes wealth to what extent, and can do so in a single image. Still, the image of wealth distribution per system in the entire world can be rather complex at first, so let's introduce wealth distribution with an image of just the United States put together by Michael Norton and Dan Ariely:

People were asked to declare what they thought the wealth distribution in the United States was, and what they believed would be a good distribution of wealth. The outcome shown above against the backdrop of what the real wealth distribution is shows how we can collectively be off the mark; we tend to think the poor are better off than they are.

Data sources do vary, so the following graph shows how much of the national distribution of income ór distribution of consumption the top 10% in a nation can call their own. All versions of government are shown, and the three versions of equal representation are the ones to the right. Please note that the distribution of consumption usually shows a lower level of inequality than the distribution of income. Various aspects on this map may therefore be further skewed than they already appear. Of great interest is the difference found between the nations with proportional elections — one with and one without a president: they show almost opposite results. Nations with proportional elections without a president all remain below the level as found in the United States, while nations with proportional elections that also elect a president show many above that level. Additional source: NationMaster.com

The next graph looks at the ten percent of the population that find themselves at the economic bottom side in their nations. The graph shows that the nations are positioned a tiny bit further apart from each other due to a different scale (a single percentage is used on the left side instead of a ten percent marker). The trends remain nevertheless visible. Many nations in top and bottom position of the previous graph come back in opposite places in this graph. The bottom ten percent of society in the United States fall below the bottom ten percent of nations of three other categories of systems.

Sometimes important information is not available for most nations, for instance, for the issue of the population living below poverty. The international standard for poverty is expressed as living below half of what is considered the national median income. It is important to note that various nations have their own definition for poverty: the United States basically multiplies the food-needs for a family three times to get its definition, while the nations in the European Union use 60% of the median income as the definition. That way, they end up with similar figures for people living below poverty. The next graph shows, however, that expressing the poverty level in one and the same way puts them further apart.