this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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That list seems mostly right, however...
The UK, France and Spain ARE NOT working democracies.
They can be considered "functioning" goverments to a degree, (and great economies no doubt).
But those 3 countries have deep socio-political issues that their goverments should attent with outmost urgency.
I don't think i should describe the situation in France, as it has been spoken quite frequently in recent months.
In the case of UK and Spain, large fractions of their populations (Ireland, Scotland and Cataluña) do not feel a partriotic sentiment towards their country as a whole, but rather the region they live in, and consider that said region should be divided into an independent nation.
Before you dive into the negative aspects (and possible concequences) of such a division, let me remind you of the current conflict between Russia and Ucraine. In wich, Russia (or more accurately the Russian goverment) wants to claim Ucraine back as part of their territory despite most people in both countries being against that decision (and even more so about the idea of a war to resolve said conflict).
Back to the UK and Spain, inside those countries, elections have been held to decide if their regions should split and be independent. However, said elections weren't quite "fair" as most people in the regions that wanted to be independent did vote on favor of independence, however it was the mayority of the countries' populations (England and the rest of Spain), that voted to keep things as they are.
AKA People that don't live (and probably don't even interact with said regions) took the decision FOR THEM.
This is specially frustrating in the case of Cataluña because they speak AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LANGUAGE from the rest of Spain.
So in conclusion, i believe that for those 3 countries to be considered "working democracies" their goverments should focus on the true needs of their people, rather than deciding matters on economic factors.
Please back up what you've said here. There was a referendum on Welsh devolution, which only people in Wales voted for. There was a referendum on Scottish independence, which only people in Scotland voted for. Afaik there has never been a vote in Northern Ireland on independence / rejoining Ireland.
The vote on Catalán independence was held by the Catalán government, voted on only in Catalonia, Spain and it's validity was rejected by the Spanish government. And Catalonia is not the only region of Spain to have its own language, and it's very common for multiple languages to be spoken within a country, I'm not really sure what the relevance of that is here.