How has the US ranked in the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index in recent years?
Executive summary
The United States has been consistently classified as a “flawed democracy” by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in recent years, slipping in rank from the mid‑20s to the high‑20s as of the EIU’s most recent reports; the EIU recorded the U.S. as 25th in earlier pandemic‑era reports and 28th in the Democracy Index 2024 (published 2025) while noting the U.S. score remained unchanged that year [1] [2] [3]. The EIU frames this decline as part of a wider global backslide in democratic measures [4].
1. How the EIU measures democracy and where the U.S. fits
The EIU’s Democracy Index aggregates 60 indicators across five categories — electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture — and classifies countries into four regime types: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes; by that framework the U.S. has repeatedly fallen into the “flawed democracy” tier in recent editions of the index [5] [4]. The Our World in Data repository reproduces EIU data and explains the same scope and intent of the index, underscoring that these are expert estimates of citizens’ political choices, civil liberties and governmental functioning [6].
2. Recent numeric ranks and the trajectory
Public reporting shows the U.S. ranked 25th in editions covering the 2020 period — a low point at the time — and remained in the “flawed democracy” category for multiple consecutive years thereafter; by the Democracy Index 2024 (published early 2025) the United States was ranked 28th, with EIU reporting that the U.S. score was unchanged that year [1] [2] [3]. Media and policy summaries — including analysis from The Fulcrum — characterized this stretch as the United States being in the second tier of global democracy rankings for several years [7].
3. Why the EIU flagged the U.S.: context from the reports
The EIU’s commentary links U.S. downgrades to erosion of trust in institutions, strains on checks and balances and political polarization, trends that influenced the U.S. score in the 2020‑2021 period and informed subsequent assessments; the EIU’s 2024 reporting also situates the U.S. finding within a larger global decline that pushed the global average to its lowest since the index began [2] [4]. The EIU’s own 2024 summary explicitly noted a continued democratic decline worldwide even as a record number of people voted in 2024 elections, and flagged political culture and functioning of government among the areas it tracks [4] [3].
4. Caveats, competing measures and editorial context
The Democracy Index is one of several comparative indices — others include Freedom House and V‑Dem — and methodological choices shape outcomes; Wikipedia and Congressional Research Service summaries observe the EIU’s methodology and note it is a private, expert‑driven assessment published by a commercial research arm of The Economist Group, which is relevant when weighing editorial framing or perceived biases [8] [9]. The CRS synthesis also places the EIU alongside other indices for a fuller picture, reminding readers that differences in definitions and indicators can yield different country rankings [9].
5. What the trend means and what the sources do not resolve
Taken together, EIU publications and media reporting document a clear pattern: the United States moved from rankings in the mid‑20s to 28th in the most recent EIU index and has been consistently labeled a “flawed democracy” for several years, a judgment the EIU grounds in declines in institutional trust and contested political norms [1] [3] [2]. The sources supplied do not provide a full year‑by‑year table across every edition in this packet, nor do they settle debates about whether specific policy actions should be counted more heavily; for those details the original EIU tables and companion datasets should be consulted [10] [6].