United States no longer classifies as a democracy

The following excerpt is from an article published 14 Oct 2025 in Swedish newspaper EXPRESSEN - a nationwide newspaper.

The article quotes a representative from Gothenburg’s University. The link to the full article is provided below. Use translator to translate it from Swedish to English.

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“The United States is no longer a democracy.”

This is what researchers have established – six months before the world’s largest democracy survey is published.

“Right now, the United States has by far crossed the line into an autocracy,” says Staffan Lindberg, who heads the research institute V-dem, placing the United States in the second worst category.

Every year, the University of Gothenburg, the world’s largest democracy survey, Varieties of Democracy (V-dem), is conducted, in which all countries are included and assessed on the basis of a total of 31 million measurement points. All this is weighed together in an advanced computer system and forms a picture of the status of democracy in the world.

“We then wrote a first new report that we called ‘A democratic collapse that is about to happen?’ and were able to conclude that if development continues at the same rapid pace as before, the United States can no longer be classified as a democracy after the summer.”

Staffan Lindberg draws parallels to Turkey under Erdogan, Hungary under Orban and even Russia under Putin.

“I would say that the United States is not far from where Russia was in 2003, or Turkey in 2016.”

See full article HERE.

Réal Laplaine

Author of high-concept thrillers

www.reallaplaine.com