THE UNITED STATES' overall 'democracy score' has fallen in the Economist's annual Democracy Index, which was published earlier this week.
While America maintained its ranking as the 25th best democracy in the world, its status has been downgraded to 'flawed democracy'.
America's overall score of 7.92 was down from 7.96 the previous year.
The report noted that the US had lost points due to Donald Trump's attempts to challenge the result of last year's presidential election, which was taken into account.
Those efforts, according to the report, follow increasing trends in other countries "to challenge the result of elections and referendums, and to seek to discredit the outcome by alleging external interference and giving credence to conspiracy theories."
"The US's overall performance is held back by a number of weaknesses, including extremely low levels of trust in institutions and political parties; deep dysfunction in the functioning of government; increasing threats to freedom of expression; and a degree of societal polarisation that makes consensus on any issue almost impossible to achieve," the report added.
America did however improve its score for political participation, however, as the coronavirus pandemic, movements for racial justice and other key events fuelled a high level of participation in the 2020 elections.
There are four categories in the index; Full democracy; Flawed Democracy; Hybrid regime; Authoritarian regime.
The report measures five main categories; electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture - and assigns scores to each one.
The top three democracies remain unchanged since 2019, as Norway, Iceland and Sweden secured 1st, 2nd and 3rd place respectively.
Ireland meanwhile was ranked as having the 8th-best democracy in the world. The UK was ranked 16th, Canada was ranked 5th and Australia was ranked 9th - all with 'full democracy' status.
At the very bottom of the index, once again, was the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo (ironic, no?) and North Korea.
See the full index, here.
