“Where liberty dwells, there is my country”*…

Ah, but where might that be? Amos Miller (using tools from the good folks at Mapbox) shares a handy site with the answers…

The Civic Atlas is a project which marries leading civic data sets with information on governance types and physical capitals.

This project is an exploration of physical governance. As international relations enter another era of rocky uncertainty, it’s important to have the opportunity to look at a world which is not flat or equal. Many countries are on the march away from freedom and democracy towards autocracy. Many are already there.
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Explore this project by selecting various freedom and democracy indices in the dropdown menu. Click a state to see where its legislative authority is housed, more information about the country, its governance system, and its governance scores. To learn more about each index, click on its link in the nav bar while selected.

This is our globe.
We all live here.

A visualization of governance around the globe: “The Civic Atlas.”

* Latin phrase of unknown origin; the motto of Algernon Sydney and James Otis

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As we compare and contrast, we might spare a thought for Alexis de Tocqueville; he died on this date in 1859. A French diplomat, political philosopher, and historian, he is best known for his works Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes, 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In both, he analyzed the living standards and social conditions of individuals as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies.  Democracy in America was published after Tocqueville’s travels in the United States (on a mission to examine prisons and penitentiaries here) and is today considered an immensely important early work of sociology and political science.

“The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democracy, from beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep” – from Democracy in America

source

The idea of elections "with the least possible excitement and suspense" is really appealing.

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