ERic Zuesse: Here’s How Democratic Your Country Is

Illustrative Image

Written by Eric Zuesse

When a nation’s head-of-state has more than half of its residents who choose either “Approve” or “Disapprove” of that leader choose “Approve” and thereofore fewer than half of them choose “Disapprove” for that leader, then this suggests majority-approval of that person’s leadership of the Government; and this generally indicates that the given country’s Government reflects the majority of its residents, which means that it is a democracy.

When a nation’s head-of-state has fewer than half of its residents who choose either “Approve” or “Disapprove” of that leader choose “Approve” and thereofore more than half of them choose “Disapprove” for that leader, then this suggests majority-disapproval of that person’s leadership of the Government; and this generally indicates that the given country’s Government doesn’t reflect the majority of its residents, which means that it is not a democracy but instead some type of dictatorship.

The Morning Consult international polling organization every week samples public opinion in each of the following 22 countries regarding Approve and Disapprove percentages pertaining to each nation’s head-of-state, so as to determine the Approve/Disapprove percentages for each nation’s leader as rated by that country’s residents:

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Brazil
• Canada
• Czechia
• France
• Germany
• India
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• Mexico
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Poland
• South Korea
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• U.K.
• U.S.

They do not sample in any of the countries that the U.S. Government is trying to regime-change — in other words, to conquer by means of invasion or coup or sanctions or subversion. Therefore: China and Russia are not included in their pollings. However, there exist other polls that basically answer this question for each of those two nations, and that information will also be provided here — especially because the main excuse that the U.S. and its allies give for trying to regime-change a given country is that that targeted country is being alleged by them to be less democratic than the country that is trying to conquer it is — the would-be conquering nations call it ‘autocratic’, or a ‘dictatorship’.

For any given leader in the Morning Consult polls, there tends to be remarkable stability:  the rank-order of leaders tends to change little, if at all, from one week to the next, and even from one month to the next; so, these findings aren’t merely ephemera, but instead say something important about the leader and about that person’s relationship with his or her compatriots.

Here are the actual ratings as-of 2 November 2023:

LEADER APPROVE DISAPPROVE

1. Narendra Modi (India) 79% 17%
2. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Mexico) 64% 32%
3. Alain Berset (Switzerland) 64% 27%
4. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil) 50% 43%
5. Anthony Albanese (Australia) 45% 44%
6. Pedro Sánchez (Spain) 42% 53%
7. Giorgia Meloni (Italy) 41% 54%
8. Joe Biden (U.S.) 38% 55%
9. Leo Varadkar (Ireland) 38% 54%
10. Alexander De Croo (Belgium) 37% 49%
11. Justin Trudeau (Canada) 32% 63%
12. Ulf Kristersson (Sweden) 31% 58%
13. Mateusz Morawiecki (Poland) 31% 61%
14. Rishi Sunak (U.K.) 28% 63%
15. Jonas Gahr Støre (Norway) 26% 65%
16. Olaf Scholz (Germany) 26% 68%
17. Mark Rutte (Netherlands) 26% 68%
18. Emmanuel Macron (France) 25% 70%
19. Karl Nehammer (Austria) 23% 71%
20. Yoon Seok-youl (South Korea) 21% 72%
21. Fumio Kishida (Japan) 18% 70%
22. Petr Fiala (Czech Republic) 18% 76%

Probably the 4 countries on this list that are the least controlled by the U.S. Government are #s 1 through 4 on it: India, Mexico, Switzerland, and Brazil. The #5 country is Australia, which is in the democratic category by only 1%: 45% democratic, versus 44% dictatorial.

All of the other 17 countries on this list of 22 are clearly controlled by (or vasal-nations, or colonies, or ‘allies’), of the United States; those 17 are clearly member-nations in the U.S. empire.

Regarding China and Russia, I posted, on 3 July 2023, at Dissident Voice, the following information about those two countries (and it shows that according to this measure, those two countries are even more democratic than is India, which is the highest-rated in the 22 Morning Consult polls):

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Just as, in the U.S., the Gallup polling organization is the standard one that has tracked approve-disapprove for U.S. Presidents over decades; in Russia, the Levada polling organization has done the same, and it has periodically polled Russians about Putin. Ever since he became Russia’s leader on 1 January 2000, his average Approve is 70% and Disapprove is 25% for a net +35% over that 23-year period, but recently it is instead 80% Approve and 15% Disapprove, for a net +70%, which is even higher than Modi’s +58% in India [at that time, 3 July 2023; but in their latest poll, 2 November 2023, it is 79%-17%=+62%].

I’ve not found any polling-results on China’s President Xi, but two polls are relevant: On 22 August 2022, I headlined “NATO-Affiliated Poll in 53 Countries Finds Chinese the Most Think Their Country Is a Democracy” and reported that, “A poll in 53 countries by the NATO-affiliated “Alliance of Democracies” found that 83% of Chinese think that China is a democracy. That’s the highest percentage amongst all of the 53 countries surveyed.” And, the “U.S. was worse than average, and was tied at #s 40&41, out of the 53 nations, with Colombia, at 49%” — barely less than half of Americans think they live in a democracy. Furthermore: the Edelman Trust Barometer polls in 28 countries, and some of its questions are likewise relevant. On 24 March 2023, I headlined “How Nations’ Citizens Rate Their Own Government” and reported that of all 28 nations surveyed by the Edelman organization, the trust in the Government was the highest in China, at 91%, while only 39% of Americans trust their Government. Only 37% of Russians do, and Russians have distrusted their Government ever since there has been polling on that — the disparity between how Russians rate their Government versus how they rate Putin is enormous and has no parallel in any other country that I know of. Perhaps local governments are lousy there. It’s a disparity that ought to be examined scientifically. But, also, U.S. President Biden’s saying, of Putin, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power” is plain evil, just like his calling Xi a “dictator” is. For Biden, with a net job-approval of -13%, to be saying such things about national leaders who have served their nations vastly better than Biden has been serving his, is hateful, closed-minded, petty, and extremely dangerous both to his own country and to all countries; it is despicable, and clearly marks him as a leader who needs to be regime-changed as soon as possible (but not replaced by anyone in his Administration, since he has surrounded himself with individuals who are just as dangerous as he himself is).

Anyhow: the way that America’s super-rich, who provide most of the funding to U.S. political campaigns, keep supplying the country with abysmal Presidents virtually nonstop ever since the end of WW II (and, so, ever since 1945, the U.S. Government has perpetrated 297 invasions and at least 60 coups) is by selecting to fund in each Party only politicians who will serve their bidding and not the public’s needs. It’s the same in all U.S.-and-allied countries.

Just look at the “Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker” to see how it has been playing out in each one of the 17 U.S.-and-allied countries. None of them is a democracy (one-person-one-vote); each of them is an aristocracy (one-dollar-one-vote, just like a corporation is). Each one of them is pay-to-play. And that is why each of these nations is a game that the public always loses.

So: in the U.S.-and-allied world, the publics constantly hear and read that their own country is a “democracy” but that China and Russia are “dictatorships,” and this hate-machine is nonstop. It’s an upside-down ‘reality’, which produces “manufactured consent” (but NOT democracy). It produces wars. It produces invasions, coups, and sanctions. And profits for the owners.

IMPORTANT UPDATE [on July 3rd]: This was called to the attention of the reporter (me) after I wrote the above, but it is highly relevant even though it’s “old news” that I had not previously known of: On 9 July 2020, the Harvard Gazette headlined “Taking China’s Pulse”. That reported on a Harvard study, “Understanding CCP Resilence: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time”, which contained the findings from their team’s surveys which had been conducted in eight waves from 2003 through 2016, from 32,000 scientifically sampled residents in China, and which found that — as the “policy brief” itself put it — “Chinese citizen satisfaction with government has increased virtually across the board. From the impact of broad national policies to the conduct of local town officials, Chinese citizens rate the government as more capable and effective than ever before. Interestingly, more marginalized groups in poorer, inland regions are actually comparatively more likely to report increases in satisfaction. Second, the attitudes of Chinese citizens appear to respond (both positively and negatively) to real changes in their material well-being, which suggests that support could be undermined by the twin challenges of declining economic growth and a deteriorating natural environment.” This statement suggests that this “policy brief” was done for the U.S. Government in order to find ways to “undermine” China’s Government. (It was here implicitly recommending for the U.S. Government to do what it can to produce in China “declining economic growth and a deteriorating natural environment.”) In fact, the document’s ”Introduction: On Authoritarian Resilience” states: “The goal of this research brief, and of the longitudinal survey that informs it, is to address the question of government legitimacy in China using the most objective and quantitative methods currently available.” But, anyway, what it found was that the legitimacy of China’s Governemt was actually higher than of American’s Government: “Even in 2003, the central government received a strong level of satisfaction, with 86.1% expressing approval and 8.9% disapproving. This high level of satisfaction increased even further by 2016, but such increases were minimal because public satisfaction was already high to begin with. By contrast, in 2003, township-level governments had quite negative satisfaction rates, with 44% expressing approval and 52% disapproving. However, by 2016, these numbers had flipped with 70% approving and only 26% disapproving.” So: the Chinese Government’s possessing higher legitimacy than any other in the world goes back at least as far as 2003 (or 2016 as regards local government) and has been increasing ever since. As “Taking China’s Pulse” phrased the matter: “The survey team found that compared to public opinion patterns in the U.S., in China there was very high satisfaction with the central government. In 2016, the last year the survey was conducted, 95.5 percent of respondents were either ‘relatively satisfied’ or ‘highly satisfied’ with Beijing. In contrast to these findings, Gallup reported in January of this year that their latest polling on U.S. citizen satisfaction with the American federal government revealed only 38 percent of respondents were satisfied with the federal government.” Though Harvard knew they were working for a Government that was far more “Autharitarian” or a dictatorship than was China’s, they wrote using the term “Authoritarian” for China, but not for America. To place that Harvard study into the perspective of the present article’s headline, “How the Billionaires Control U.S.-and-Allied Governments”: Wikipedia says that “The Harvard University endowment (valued at $53.2 billion as of June 2021)^[1] is the largest academic endowment in the world.^[2][3]”

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

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