President Bush is fond of saying that "democracy is on the march" around the world. That's been largely true for the last couple decades, but a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit (pdf) says that over the last two years the global trend toward democratization has been stopped in its tracks. Even further, the report suggests the global financial crisis has the potential to start the march moving in the opposite direction:

The results of the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index 2008 confirm that, following a decades-long global trend in democratisation, the spread of democracy has come to a halt. Comparing the results for 2008 with those from the first edition of the index, which covered 2006, shows that the dominant pattern in the past two years has been stagnation. Although there is no recent trend of outright regression, there are few instances of significant improvement. However, the global financial crisis, resulting in a sharp and possibly protracted recession, could threaten democracy in some parts of the world.

The report also classifies only 30 of the world's countries as being "full democracies," with another 50 countries deemed "flawed democracies." Only 14% of the world's population lives within those countries considered "full democracies."

As for the United States, we rank 18th on the list of full democracies, smack dab between Japan and the Czech Republic. Five of the top six ranked countries are Scandinavian: Sweden (1), Norway (2), Iceland (3), Denmark (5), and Finland (6).

The good news? At least we're still ahead of France - though not by very much.

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