Over the last six years polarised political debate, growing tensions between socio-economic or racial groups, deterioration in the quality of information available to the public, and opinion and propaganda masquerading as news helped create conditions for current US civil unrest.
We’re only one week into the new year and today’s distressing violence on Washington’s Capitol Hill sidelined the spirit of the holiday season.
The aggression displayed shows the alarming evidence of a substantial deterioration in levels of societal resilience.
We take a look at the data behind the deteriorations — in six charts:
Since 2017, there are more Democrats and Republicans in the US that feel political violence is at least partially justified.
In the last decade, the Quality of Information indicator recorded the largest deterioration in the US. Quality of Information is one of eight Positive Peace indicators, which declined by 113.6% in the US.
Incidents of civil unrest doubled over the last decade.
The rate of civil unrest events per country increased tenfold in flawed democracies between 2011 to 2018.
As civil unrest increases globally, democracy decreases.
Confidence in elections is 2.16 times greater in countries with a very high level of peace, compared to those with very low levels of peace.
