Stidmatt

The beginning of the expansion of the Russian Empire began when Moscow conquered Novgorod in 1478, leading to 500 years of uncontrolled expansion across northern Eurasia.

World War I is when the story becomes quite interesting. Germany conquered Poland from the Russian Empire in 1917, and at the end of the war instead of giving Poland back to Russia, Poland became independent. Finland and the Baltic States also gained independence as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution. This infuriated Russia.

In the early 1920s the Soviet Union conquered Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. Smaller countries who did not have the support or manpower to counter the invasions.

During the 1920s and 1930s the Soviet Union did not have the military power to continue unchecked military expansion across Eurasia. Focusing more on industrial self-sabotage through actions like the Holodomor.

But this changed in 1939. Russia attacked Finland and Poland in the same year. Germany also attacked Poland. The goal of the Nazis and communists was simple, take back the land they believed was wrongfully stolen from them during the Bolshevik Revolution and World War I. No one helped Finland and Poland. After reconquering the lands “stolen” from their empires, they would continue to conquer the rest of the world. If Hitler had not betrayed Stalin, I believe their plan would have worked.

At the end of World War II, an array of democracies were established in the area that had been conquered by Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union invaded each of these countries and brought them under de facto Soviet Rule under the Warsaw Pact. NATO was formed in 1949 in response to these invasions. United we stand, divided we fall.

As a result of the formation of NATO and the European Coal and Steel Community, the Soviet Union spent the rest of the Cold War focused on Asia. Vietnam was partitioned in 1954, the same year that SEATO was established. Given the experiences in Eastern Europe and Korea at the beginning of the Cold War, everyone knew that an independent South Vietnam without alliances would not stand a chance. SEATO was created a direct response to these invasions. The Vietnam War started in 1955, and lasted for 20 years. The Soviet Union won that war.

After their success in Vietnam, the Soviet Union turned to Afghanistan. They saw Afghanistan as a small country which would be easily conquered, but given the amount of aid given to the Mujaheddin by the United States and Gulf States, they were unable to conquer Afghanistan. The Mujaheddin won, and remained in power until 2001, after rebranding to become the Taliban.

Russia continued its expansion with support of separatist movements in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria in the 1990s and 2000s. They prevented the independence of Chechnya and Dagestan.

Finally in 2008 Russia launched its first full-scale invasion since the breakup of the Soviet Union when they invaded Georgia. NATO failed to defend Georgia fully, leaving Abkhazia and South Ossetia under de facto Russian control.

6 years later, they invaded Ukraine, conquering Crimea, Donbass, and Luhansk.

The playbook of Russia is simple, they will continuously invade every neighboring country they can until there is nowhere else they can invade. This has been a continual theme of Russian politics for 600 years. That is Russian political culture.

The only realistic way to stop the Russian playbook is expansion of NATO to include every democracy bordering Russia, meaning Georgia and Ukraine. Every other plan is pure fantasy.

Back in college when I studied Social Security, my teachers were stating how the program was likely to run a deficit soon, and eventually run out of money.

Net income for OASI peaked in 2006, and hit a deficit in 2021. The deficit in 2024 was over $100 billion from reserves of $2.5 trillion.

If the $2.5 trillion was invested at a 6% growth rate, it would generate another $150 billion in revenue, which would cover the shortfall. But we are not diversifying OASI’s investments to higher interest payments because the government likes to have an easy way to cover the deficit with low-interest bonds.

The Social Security Administration predicts the OASI trust fund will be depleted in 2033 if nothing changes.

This means the government will need to find more money to cover the cost of retirees, print money risking inflation, or increase taxes. There are no good options anymore.

If we had invested the money properly starting in 2009 with an average 8% annual return we would likely have over $7 trillion in the OASI trust fund by now, even if we never deposited another penny into the trust fund.

Year	Balance in millions
2007	$2,023,000.00
2008	$2,023,000.00
2009	$2,184,840.00
2010	$2,359,627.20
2011	$2,548,397.38
2012	$2,752,269.17
2013	$2,972,450.70
2014	$3,210,246.76
2015	$3,467,066.50
2016	$3,744,431.82
2017	$4,043,986.36
2018	$4,367,505.27
2019	$4,716,905.69
2020	$5,094,258.15
2021	$5,501,798.80
2022	$5,941,942.70
2023	$6,417,298.12
2024	$6,930,681.97
2025	$7,485,136.52

With an annual income of over $500 billion a year, there would be more than enough interest to cover the deficit for far longer than is currently projected while continuing to grow the fund.

Economists saw this coming and politicians did nothing.

We did not give people the option to diversify into a super annuation.

We did not properly invest the money to ensure there would be enough money in reserves to cover an aging population.

We decided to screw over the retirement of every millennial.

While I will be fine because I’m able to max out my retirement account, this is going to screw over so many of my fellow American millennials who do not have the income to max out their 401k contributions. It is going to screw over millions of Americans who do not know how to properly balance their retirement accounts using index funds for growth. It is going to screw over the millions of Americans in maximum benefit plans from their work who are at risk of both funds being underfunded when they retire.

Even giving people like me the ability to opt out of Social Security and put that money in a superannuation fund would save the government money while increasing my retirement account. But the government did not choose to do that. Democrats oppose it on principal, and Republicans refuse to do anything to help the middle class.

It was completely avoidable.

It makes me mad.

C’est la vie.

References:

https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4a1.html

https://www.ssa.gov/budget/assets/materials/2025/2025BST.pdf

https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2025/tr2025.pdf

Over the last century, we have had 8 Democratic presidents, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden.

Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson were the New Deal/Great Society/progressive coalition. This coalition dominated a Democratic party which was divided between the north and the south. The only one who did not win reelection was Kennedy because he was assassinated. They won their reelections by healthy margins in the electoral college, and only Truman received less than 50% of the popular vote in his only time on the ballot.

Then we see a shift in the party to a more moderate take with the New Democrats. Carter, Clinton, and Biden are clearly of this caucus. Only Clinton won reelection.

Obama does not clearly identify as a New Democrat or as a Progressive, because he is somewhere in the middle of the two camps. He is a mainstream democrat.

This brings me to the idea of why was Bill Clinton the only moderate Democrat to win reelection in the last century? I did a deep dive into the Clinton presidency in 2019, and this article is a much delayed follow up.

Using Keys to the White House, Clinton got lucky in how Bob Dole was uncharismatic, the economy was strong, and America was at peace. He also got unlucky with the presence of a third party with Ross Perot running again. He is rated as not having passed any major policy, but he also passed a lot of smaller but significant pieces of legislation.

Basically, Clinton won reelection because he was not a very flashy president. He was a stable president through a strong economy which was seeing the benefits of investments made decades ago through the computer revolution. Everyone was seeing the benefits, and America was not involved in any major foreign wars. We had a few UN missions, such as Somalia and Yugoslavia during his presidency, but no major wars like we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s.

Essentially, if you are going to govern as a moderate, don’t rock the boat and get lucky. As long as the economy is strong, you don’t do anything crazy, and keep us at peace, you will likely win reelection.

Winning elections comes down to not screwing up. Clinton did not screw up in his first term, so he won reelection.

Failed reelection campaigns

The first failed reelection campaign was in 1800, only our third presidential election. Adams’ presidency was dominated by neutrality during the French Revolution and the Alien and Sedition Acts. I need to write an article specifically on the first Adams administration someday exploring why he lost to Jefferson. This election led to the 12th Amendment due to Jefferson and Burr tying in the Electoral College. Our original election system was a rough draft, and we are currently on the first release version.

His son, John Quincy Adams also lost reelection. He lost both the popular and electoral vote on the first count, leading to the insane rules we had in that era, using the rules from the 12th amendment to the constitution which made the process better, but still insane. Since no candidate had won a majority of the Electoral College, each state voted as a single unit with one vote each. Adams won 13 states to the 7 states voting for Jackson, and 4 for Crawford. Adams won the most states, so he became president.

The 1828 presidential election was lost primarily due to the Tariff of 1828 which significantly harmed the South and (Mid)West. Adams continued to dominate in New England, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, as Jackson carried the rest of the country. This brought down the Second Adams Administration.

Martin Van Buren failed to win reelection in 1840. I believe the main reason for this is the Panic of 1837. He had a plan to remedy the source of the problem, was unable to convince members of congress to agree with him. Whigs wanted a national bank. Democrats wanted a more moderate proposal. Nothing was done to fix the crisis, and William Henry Harrison defeated Van Buren as a consequence.

1844 is a weird election. President Tyler refused to run for reelection. Tyler had successfully managed to alienate basically everybody through his opposition to a national bank, support for slavery, and was generally a horrible president. He chose not to run for reelection, leading to James Polk winning a large majority in the Electoral College, while being a fairly small margin in the popular vote.

1848 once again saw the incumbent President Polk choose not to run for reelection. Former President Martin Van Buren captured 10% of the vote as a third party spoiler, giving victory to the Whigs. This is of course a Key to the White House.

The presidency once again flipped in 1852 back to the Democrats. President Fillmore was a deeply unpopular president who signed the Fugitive Slave Act despite being a Whig. President Pierce won most states in the north and the south to become president, losing only 4.

The 1860 election is famous for electing President Lincoln. President Buchanan tried to compromise his way to stability to prevent a civil war, and in the process ended up alienating everybody. The Whig Party had dissolved at this point and rebranded as the Republican Party. Lincoln won every state in the north, and the Electoral College.

The presidency stayed in the hands of the Republicans (basically) until 1884 when Grover Cleveland narrowly beat out James G. Blaine. Cleveland won a narrow 0.1% margin of victory in New York and the election. Blaine was known for being corrupt, and Cleveland carried the Solid South.

1888 was the second election in American history where the winner of the popular vote (Cleveland) lost the Electoral College, giving Harrison a victory. By flipping New York state, Harrison became president.

The presidency flipped again in 1892, due to the Populist James B. Weaver stealing votes from President Harrison. Democrats opposed expanding voting rights to African Americans, giving them a solid victory in the South. Grover Cleveland was the only Democratic president between James Buchanan and Woodrow Wilson.

The second Cleveland presidency was mired in a depression, leading to McKinley winning the election in 1896. President McKinley became the first president to win reelection since President Grant.

The 1912 election swung to Wilson due to a spoiler from Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party.

The nation was mired in a recession, there was a strong third party, the United States did not join the League of Nations, and massive strikes by unions led to the Republican Warren Harding winning the 1920 election.

The Great Depression and President Hoover’s uncharismatic nature gave the 1932 election to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The 1952 election was lost due to the fall of China to communism, a divisive primary contest in the democratic party, congressional investigations into corruption during the Truman administration, and a lack of charisma from Stevenson.

There was no way the Republicans could win the 1960 election, with both foreign policy keys and both economic keys flipped false. It’s amazing the election was as close as it was.

The chaos of 1968 with a divisive primary, large debates about the Vietnam War, plus protests with the assassination of both Malcolm X and Dr. King led to Nixon winning the presidency.

There was absolutely no way a Republican was going to win in 1976 after the Watergate Scandal.

With a weak economy and a primary contest, Reagan won the 1980 presidential election.

Another recession in 1991 led to Clinton winning the presidential election in 1992.

The 2000 election was the closest in American history, and Al Gore probably did win the election.

With the largest recession since the Great Depression, Obama easily won the 2008 election.

Clinton probably did win the 2016 presidential election. If she had more charisma, she definitely would have won by losing fewer votes to third parties.

Biden was running against the plague in 2020, giving him an easy victory.

2024 was mired with the wars in Palestine and Ukraine, the terrorists had won in Afghanistan, plus the K-shaped recovery following COVID due to the invasion of Ukraine gave Trump the victory.

So what

By examining exactly why the presidency has changed parties through American history, we find a few clear trends quickly emerge.

• Economic crises usually lead to a flip of the presidency.
• Foreign policy can absolutely make a difference in opinion about the president, like in 1952 and 2024.
• Incumbents refusing to run for a second term usually leads to a party flip, like in 1844, 1848, 1852, 1856, and 2024.
• Charisma absolutely matters, as we saw in 1840, 1932, and 2024.
• No third party spoilers, as we saw in 1848, 1912, 1992, 2000, and 2016.

This tells us about the type of person we need to run as president if we care about them winning reelection. Here is what I think the most electable president would look like in general:

• They either need good economic policy chops themselves or be able to surround themselves with the best economists who can give excellent advice. Obama excelled at this.
• They need strong foreign policy chops in order to have a stable world. There is no modern example of such a president, since Clinton had no major foreign policy successes.
• They need to be able to run for a second term. I’m sorry Warren and Sanders, you are both amazing people, but we should have a president who is under 70 to guarantee they can stay in solid health for 8 years.
• We need someone with very strong charisma, and this is easily measured through a candidate’s ability to get people to engage both online and in person.
• Be popular with a wide enough percentage of your voters so they don’t abandon your party for a third party.

Cutting to the chase, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez should be our candidate in 2028.

• She will certainly have the best economic advisors around her.
• Her understanding of foreign policy is better than most other politicians. She is a liberal internationalist and supports Ukraine joining NATO.
• She’s in her 30s, she will definitely be able to serve for 8 years.
• Her social media skills are unparalleled. She commands the room when she speaks.

Cory Booker is coming up more and more, but he supports sending Israel weapons. His foreign policy chops are weak.

Gavin Newsom is uncharismatic when it comes to social issues.

Either of them would have to get lucky like Clinton did in 1996 in order to win reelection. All they need are two major foreign policy failures, and a Republican could win in 2032, economics be damned. The major difference in the world today is that with Russia more strong than they are in the 1990s, foreign policy will play a bigger role than it did for President Clinton. The necessity to expand NATO further and bring America diplomatically closer to our natural allies is more important now than any other point in history.

AOC is the obvious candidate for 2028 and 2032. She will win. She needs to be president.

The United States is in a severe crisis of trust. Trust in government has collapsed since George W. Bush has come into office, and it has only gotten worse the more time Trump has been in office.

https://www.edelman.com/trust/data-dashboard

We see a clear uptick in distrust when Trump entered office in 2017 and then it stabilized and actually improved a small amount when Biden came into office.

I expect as we see more absurd behavior from Trump, trust will continue to decline. I anticipate we will observe economic repercussions from his tariffs which will be severe before his term is over.

Assuming we have elections since there is no clear sign that elections have stopped this year, and assuming the Republicans lose in 2028, we have two potential paths forward.

The Messiah

The optimistic approach in me is we elect a president who will be able to rally the country together, along with a democratic congress who will get things done. Be honest, caring, and abolish unpopular policies which are responsible for the decline in trust over the last 25 years while establishing safeguards. As we see our nation is more safe, more prosperous, and just generally better, this will start by ending the decline in trust, and then we have over a decade of competent and caring presidents with cooperative congresses who will move our country onto the right track.

Is this likely? I don’t think so. It feels like a fantasy. But it is possible.

Devolution

While trust in the Federal government has plummeted, trust in local government has remained quite high.

This brings us to our alternative to a competent president improving trust in the federal government. Assume 50% of Americans trusting federal government at this point is impossible. Call the project of federal social safety nets off and devolve to state governments.

Trump and congress work to destroy Old Age and Survivor’s Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, TANF, unemployment, and other programs which benefit Americans. Federal support for education is cut. These social programs along with the military devolve down to the states to manage themselves, since people generally trust their state governments more than the federal. It is also easier for most Americans to get to their state capitol compared to Washington, DC. Reduce these interstate transfers permanently, and have state governments take over those functions.

The constant complaining from people in the south of a disconnected federal government which never serves them (mostly because they keep electing incompetent buffoons like Marjorie Taylor Green who does not serve her constituents well, so yes, it is absolutely their own fault) will no longer have any sway. If their schools, health care, and infrastructure are not working, they will only have their state and local government to blame. But who elects those state and local leaders? The only people to blame for their poverty and corruption will be themselves. Are they upset about having broken legislative maps? Stop whining and start an initiative process to move to proportional representation or independent bipartisan redistricting committees. Well-run states have done so. There is no excuse.

The states with functional state governments which spend more in federal taxes then we get back will find that constant flow of money out of our states will be turned off. We will have more resources then to improve our own states without the federal government getting in the way and diluting our surplus while cutting off benefits for our states. Our state governments will have the resources to implement universal health care, modern public retirement systems, transit projects, and more with far less intervention from the federal government. The need for federal grants will be eliminated when we no longer spend a large amount of money in federal taxes, the money will simply stay in our states. For the states which receive more than they pay in federal taxes, which tend to be Republican, they can finally implement the small government they want. States will be able to experiment with education policy without policies like Common Core. If your state wants to implement education standards meeting the latest standards in the field you will have the right to do so. If you want to build a heavy rail system and nationalize the railroads in your state, no one will stop you. If you want to stop teaching sex ed, privatize what is left, end public schooling, outlaw anything being abstinance-only sex education, and abolish medicaid, your state will have that right too.

In either case, the voters who vote in such policies will see the impacts of their decisions. If they go poorly, they have no one to blame but themselves.

While the benefits of good policies will unfortunately be limited to state lines, the consequences of idiotic policies will finally also be limited within that state’s borders.

With the federal government doing less in terms of domestic work, federal trust will only matter for foreign policy.

We will likely get to the point where seeing significant divergence in the economic realities of states will become very extreme. Some people will certainly be stating that it is the fault of the wealthy states that the poor states are where they will land, but that is a lie.

New York doesn’t have the Subway because God put it there. New York has the subway because New Yorkers staged a mass strike when they tried to eliminate transit, and the same happened in San Francisco.

The Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco did not come down as a result of fate or an act of the divine. San Francisco was not created with a trolley and BART on the day the city was founded in 1850. These things happened because the people of San Francisco demanded it and voted them into reality. The trolley exists today because the people of San Francisco protested the removal of necessary transit lines. California wasn’t mandated to have accessible and affordable college in the 1950s and 1960s, the people of California voted for people who made such policies at the state level. The people of California voted in a very open market system which made it easy to leave your existing employer and start your own company. It’s not about low regulation or high regulation, it’s about smart regulation. The people of California built the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley through decades of voting, public and private investment, and policy. That’s the only reason why Silicon Valley is not in Atlanta, but in San Jose.

Louisiana and Mississippi are not the poorest states in the United States because they are being held back by the Federal government, quite the opposite really, they get far more money from the federal government than they pay in federal taxes. These states are poor because instead of investing in health care, education, and infrastructure, they have consistently chosen to spend their money in corporate bailouts with the hope that companies will swoop in under the promise of few workers rights and low taxes. They consistently reject federal assistance through programs like the Medicaid expansion, so they should really be getting even more than they already do from the federal government. That being said, changing employers still has major disadvantages and legal restrictions compared to California, so these are only low regulation states from the perspective of businesses. They aren’t low-regulation states, they are stupid regulation states. The consequence is that without the constant annual bailout from California, these states would be financially bankrupt. The only reason for this is the people of those states continue to elect incompetent fools who lie to them and implement bad policies.

Sakartvelo (Georgia) didn’t become the fastest growing economy in the world because of fate. Sakartvelo became the fastest growing economy in the world because the people of Sakartvelo staged a nationwide protest in 2003 after the election was fraudulent, they elected Saakashvili, and his administration did an enormous amount of work cleaning up Sakartvelo’s government which transformed their country. It wasn’t inevitable. God didn’t make it happen. The people of Sakartvelo are the only reason it happened.

In all of these cases, these changes did not happen because the Federal government or God mandated it, in fact, the federal rules about transit and highways were stacked against the people of San Francisco and New York. The people made it so further destruction of the city would be political suicide.

The United States system of government reduces the benefits made by well-run states while propping up, bailing out, and supporting states that are corrupt and harm their citizens.

These corrupt states then blame the federal government and vote in presidents like Nixon, Bush, and Trump who then implement worst practices on a nationwide scale, hurting everyone.

It does not work.

This is why devolution is the most likely path to move us out of the mess we are in. Reduce the federal government’s power, be more like the European Union, give states more rights, and when they fail, it is the responsibility of their citizens to reform their state government and fix the problems, or deal with the consequences.

The Henley Passport Index is a good index, ranking the power of each passport in the world based on whether you need to go to the embassy for a visa before travel or not.  I like it, but it has a few problems:

• We have seen a rise in corruption over the last 20 years with the imposition of eVisas across the free world between democracies. While these eVisas are relatively inexpensive and are usually granted quickly, they are not equivalent to showing up with your passport while not paying a tax. I take a very conservative approach to how I define a visa. Any document which requires you to pay a fee and register with the government before travel is a visa.
• It puts the freedom of movement as equivalent to needing an eVisa. This is ridiculous.

I treat any visa policy that requires pre-registration or paying any fee down as a visa, and any time you don’t need to pay a fee before entering a country down as visa-free. In my opinion this is better than the Henley passport index, but it is still not the same thing. It then makes it look like an American in Canada versus a Hungarian in Belgium have the same rights, but this is simply not true either. The European Union and Schengen Area include the right to work and live in other countries in the bloc without a visa, but Americans and Canadians have no such rights in the other country, so my first approach to a better passport index, while certainly better than Henley, still comes up short.

That’s where my dataset, which I use from https://visamap.io/, which is the best website I have found for visa policy and is fully open source, is very useful. It already codes these as distinctly different arrangements without stating that paying a fee for permission from a government to enter a country before you arrive and freedom of movement are equivalent, which is absurd.

While this might not be the best possible method, I took the scores for each passport in the index rated 0-15 and I simply summed them up. It is more robust than any other passport index out there today. Maybe the ratios are a bit off, but I think this gives a better result compared to existing indices.

The end result is very similar to if we rank countries with my conservative view of travel freedom. The correlations are very close.

va is voice and accountability from the World Governance Indicators. The rest is obvious.

But ultimately the change is not very significant in terms of impact. If we go with the Henley definition where everything short of an embassy visit is visa-free, if we consider any tax paid to enter a country is equivalent, or even if we calculate a score by summing up the visa ranking, the change in ranking over all passports in the world is fairly small.

The biggest change happens only at the top which pushes every European Union/European Economic Area country above the United States and Singapore. Singapore goes from having the strongest passport in the world to having the 32nd strongest passport in the world. Most other countries are fairly unchanged with only minor differences.

That being said, here is a table of this ranking where I sum every country in the world, combined with a conservative count of the countries where the passport holder needs a visa, along with a count with the more open Henley definition:

The lower the visa score, they more powerful the passport.

	Country	visa score	Visa free for passport	Visa free for passport 2
73	France	1795.0	171.0	233.0
57	Denmark	1840.0	168.0	232.0
77	Germany	1841.0	170.0	233.0
101	Italy	1841.0	170.0	233.0
191	Spain	1843.0	169.0	233.0
119	Luxembourg	1845.0	169.0	233.0
143	Netherlands	1845.0	169.0	233.0
20	Belgium	1846.0	170.0	233.0
195	Sweden	1847.0	169.0	232.0
13	Austria	1849.0	167.0	233.0
72	Finland	1851.0	168.0	232.0
98	Ireland	1855.0	166.0	233.0
126	Malta	1855.0	169.0	231.0
163	Portugal	1856.0	168.0	232.0
196	Switzerland	1856.0	167.0	232.0
162	Poland	1859.0	166.0	232.0
80	Greece	1862.0	166.0	232.0
91	Hungary	1864.0	165.0	232.0
54	Czechia	1866.0	166.0	231.0
152	Norway	1866.0	166.0	230.0
118	Lithuania	1873.0	163.0	231.0
182	Slovakia	1876.0	163.0	231.0
67	Estonia	1880.0	163.0	230.0
183	Slovenia	1880.0	163.0	230.0
112	Latvia	1880.0	163.0	230.0
51	Croatia	1884.0	161.0	231.0
92	Iceland	1896.0	160.0	228.0
53	Cyprus	1910.0	166.0	225.0
117	Liechtenstein	1915.0	158.0	226.0
167	Romania	1922.0	162.0	225.0
35	Bulgaria	1924.0	161.0	225.0
181	Singapore	1954.0	179.0	230.0
221	United States	1986.0	165.0	227.0
218	United Kingdom	1989.0	166.0	230.0
103	Japan	1992.0	165.0	230.0
144	New Zealand	1996.0	164.0	231.0
12	Australia	2007.0	161.0	231.0
40	Canada	2008.0	166.0	228.0
188	South Korea	2011.0	163.0	225.0
123	Malaysia	2035.0	164.0	224.0
217	United Arab Emirates	2038.0	160.0	225.0
45	Chile	2045.0	154.0	222.0
133	Monaco	2050.0	152.0	225.0
9	Argentina	2073.0	153.0	218.0
31	Brazil	2074.0	154.0	217.0
90	Hong Kong	2091.0	161.0	214.0
5	Andorra	2100.0	144.0	221.0
175	San Marino	2108.0	146.0	220.0
100	Israel	2121.0	150.0	213.0
18	Barbados	2133.0	150.0	216.0
171	Saint Kitts and Nevis	2137.0	147.0	213.0
34	Brunei	2139.0	149.0	212.0
222	Uruguay	2161.0	143.0	209.0
173	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	2164.0	145.0	209.0
130	Mexico	2170.0	146.0	211.0
202	Teudat Maavar	2179.0	148.0	205.0
15	Bahamas	2180.0	144.0	209.0
8	Antigua and Barbuda	2182.0	144.0	206.0
179	Seychelles	2196.0	148.0	205.0
172	Saint Lucia	2202.0	139.0	205.0
160	Peru	2205.0	133.0	207.0
208	Trinidad and Tobago	2208.0	143.0	206.0
23	Bermuda	2210.0	146.0	204.0
50	Costa Rica	2210.0	138.0	209.0
225	Vatican City	2220.0	138.0	206.0
159	Paraguay	2221.0	134.0	202.0
82	Grenada	2225.0	137.0	202.0
157	Panama	2233.0	137.0	206.0
212	Turks And Caicos	2237.0	142.0	201.0
42	Cayman Islands	2245.0	141.0	200.0
33	British Virgin Islands	2246.0	140.0	200.0
60	Dominica	2258.0	132.0	199.0
7	Anguilla	2260.0	139.0	199.0
129	Mauritius	2261.0	139.0	196.0
136	Montserrat (UK)	2264.0	139.0	198.0
170	Saint Helena	2270.0	139.0	197.0
47	Colombia	2271.0	127.0	200.0
199	Taiwan	2278.0	120.0	202.0
216	Ukraine	2284.0	127.0	200.0
120	Macau	2291.0	131.0	195.0
84	Guatemala	2295.0	124.0	202.0
32	British National Overseas	2310.0	133.0	192.0
178	Serbia	2316.0	125.0	195.0
64	El Salvador	2321.0	123.0	197.0
89	Honduras	2323.0	124.0	196.0
184	Solomon Islands	2325.0	127.0	193.0
145	Nicaragua	2354.0	119.0	193.0
127	Marshall Islands	2359.0	117.0	192.0
213	Tuvalu	2360.0	123.0	189.0
174	Samoa	2372.0	118.0	189.0
207	Tonga	2380.0	122.0	185.0
135	Montenegro	2388.0	114.0	190.0
29	Bosnia and Herzegovina	2394.0	113.0	188.0
149	North Macedonia	2396.0	113.0	189.0
107	Kiribati	2400.0	118.0	184.0
155	Palau	2404.0	109.0	188.0
131	Micronesia	2405.0	109.0	188.0
132	Moldova	2423.0	113.0	182.0
2	Albania	2425.0	110.0	184.0
226	Venezuela	2453.0	105.0	180.0
76	Georgia	2488.0	103.0	174.0
168	Russia	2525.0	100.0	164.0
205	Timor-Leste	2553.0	93.0	169.0
210	Turkey	2565.0	92.0	162.0
165	Qatar	2595.0	90.0	158.0
187	South Africa	2601.0	91.0	157.0
21	Belize	2626.0	92.0	154.0
62	Ecuador	2630.0	80.0	155.0
141	Nauru	2650.0	87.0	152.0
109	Kuwait	2655.0	78.0	152.0
27	Bolivia	2674.0	72.0	152.0
71	Fiji	2676.0	80.0	152.0
124	Maldives	2682.0	84.0	147.0
102	Jamaica	2698.0	80.0	147.0
176	Saudi Arabia	2699.0	74.0	147.0
224	Vanuatu	2717.0	77.0	145.0
87	Guyana	2718.0	77.0	144.0
16	Bahrain	2727.0	72.0	142.0
158	Papua New Guinea	2741.0	72.0	144.0
153	Oman	2751.0	67.0	141.0
30	Botswana	2753.0	78.0	135.0
46	China	2755.0	68.0	139.0
95	Indonesia	2756.0	72.0	140.0
203	Thailand	2769.0	64.0	141.0
194	Suriname	2769.0	66.0	142.0
19	Belarus	2786.0	65.0	136.0
140	Namibia	2790.0	73.0	134.0
105	Kazakhstan	2800.0	64.0	135.0
114	Lesotho	2809.0	70.0	130.0
137	Morocco	2816.0	61.0	135.0
134	Mongolia	2822.0	61.0	136.0
68	Eswatini	2827.0	67.0	129.0
61	Dominican Republic	2829.0	56.0	135.0
201	Tanzania	2831.0	70.0	126.0
106	Kenya	2842.0	65.0	127.0
122	Malawi	2844.0	66.0	126.0
10	Armenia	2850.0	58.0	130.0
209	Tunisia	2850.0	58.0	128.0
204	The Gambia	2852.0	68.0	124.0
230	Zambia	2856.0	64.0	125.0
41	Cape Verde	2858.0	62.0	127.0
78	Ghana	2860.0	65.0	125.0
108	Kosovo	2860.0	71.0	121.0
161	Philippines	2861.0	57.0	130.0
14	Azerbaijan	2862.0	56.0	127.0
94	India	2864.0	54.0	129.0
215	Uganda	2868.0	61.0	126.0
110	Kyrgyzstan	2873.0	52.0	129.0
22	Benin	2886.0	56.0	126.0
138	Mozambique	2892.0	56.0	125.0
223	Uzbekistan	2895.0	52.0	125.0
180	Sierra Leone	2898.0	63.0	118.0
169	Rwanda	2898.0	55.0	123.0
231	Zimbabwe	2902.0	60.0	119.0
52	Cuba	2903.0	51.0	124.0
206	Togo	2908.0	53.0	124.0
36	Burkina Faso	2908.0	55.0	123.0
121	Madagascar	2908.0	51.0	125.0
74	Gabon	2908.0	52.0	124.0
177	Senegal	2911.0	54.0	123.0
198	São Tomé and Príncipe	2912.0	50.0	122.0
85	Guinea	2917.0	51.0	122.0
200	Tajikistan	2920.0	47.0	123.0
55	Côte d\’Ivoire	2921.0	53.0	122.0
128	Mauritania	2925.0	52.0	120.0
146	Niger	2929.0	55.0	119.0
227	Vietnam	2933.0	46.0	122.0
104	Jordan	2934.0	46.0	121.0
3	Algeria	2935.0	46.0	122.0
65	Equatorial Guinea	2935.0	48.0	121.0
125	Mali	2935.0	55.0	117.0
24	Bhutan	2939.0	43.0	124.0
86	Guinea-Bissau	2943.0	51.0	118.0
38	Cambodia	2945.0	44.0	124.0
48	Comoros	2946.0	43.0	121.0
43	Central African Republic	2949.0	48.0	119.0
111	Laos	2954.0	44.0	121.0
63	Egypt	2954.0	44.0	118.0
44	Chad	2959.0	50.0	115.0
166	Republic of the Congo	2963.0	47.0	116.0
6	Angola	2964.0	45.0	118.0
115	Liberia	2965.0	50.0	115.0
88	Haiti	2977.0	39.0	118.0
59	Djibouti	2978.0	41.0	118.0
39	Cameroon	2978.0	45.0	116.0
211	Turkmenistan	2986.0	38.0	116.0
192	Sri Lanka	2988.0	45.0	113.0
37	Burundi	2991.0	42.0	115.0
69	Ethiopia	2994.0	38.0	117.0
139	Myanmar	3007.0	39.0	114.0
113	Lebanon	3009.0	41.0	111.0
147	Nigeria	3012.0	50.0	105.0
56	Democratic Republic of the Congo	3013.0	43.0	110.0
96	Iran	3017.0	38.0	110.0
66	Eritrea	3018.0	36.0	114.0
142	Nepal	3027.0	35.0	113.0
17	Bangladesh	3037.0	43.0	103.0
190	South Sudan	3037.0	41.0	106.0
193	Sudan	3045.0	36.0	107.0
148	North Korea	3053.0	33.0	107.0
116	Libya	3058.0	36.0	104.0
154	Pakistan	3081.0	35.0	101.0
185	Somalia	3085.0	33.0	100.0
97	Iraq	3092.0	34.0	99.0
229	Yemen	3101.0	31.0	99.0
156	Palestine	3118.0	30.0	95.0
1	Afghanistan	3132.0	29.0	95.0
197	Syria	3133.0	29.0	92.0
189	South Ossetia	3252.0	23.0	24.0
0	Abkhazia	3253.0	23.0	24.0
150	Northern Cyprus	3282.0	20.0	20.0
186	Somaliland	3283.0	20.0	20.0

We continue to find that the way to have a stronger passport is for your country be wealthy, democratic, and have low corruption.

Every country with good corruption and democratic scores with a GDP per capita can travel to over 100 countries without any form of visa. But of these three factors, GDP per capita is the least important. Reducing corruption and democracy are the not-so secret ingredients for making a passport strong, no matter how we measure passport strength.

A lot of people are telling me democracy is over, and we won’t have elections next year.

Here are historical examples of wealthy democracies that became undemocratic through elections since 1945. I’m not including leaders who initially came to power through coups. I’m not including failed attempts. The leader must have come to power in a contested election because I’m not looking for continuations of autocracy; I’m looking for established democracies that became autocracies where the leader had majority support from the beginning.

Seizing of power in a low-income democratic country

The most recent case is in Venezuela. Chavez was popular in the beginning and likely did win the first few elections. The 2018 election, however, was marred by irregularities, and it is clear that Guaido won. Maduro has not relinquished power, and the United States and the rest of the Rio Pact have not acted to remove Maduro from power as allies of Venezuela.

Daniel Ortega has been in power since 2007 in Nicaragua, leading to a severe decline in human rights in the country. The 2011 election is particularly egregious, despite getting between 36% and 46% of the vote in polls before the election, Ortega supposedly won 62% of the vote. There is no doubt that elections in Nicaragua have been fraudulent ever since. Ortega has continued to clamp down on civil liberties.

The Georgian election last October was marred by fraud. Their current government is illegitimate.

Seizures through an election in a country with no history of democracy

Russia is the obvious example, if you count the 2000 presidential election as fair. But Putin is fundamentally different from Trump in how he has been consistently popular in Russia, in contrast to Trump consistently doing poorly in the polls.

Lukashenko in Belarus is another example of a leader who was likely elected in a fair election and has taken control of the entire country to the present date.

Belarus and Russia saw their presidents come to power through elections while maintaining high levels of popularity, but they have no history of democracy, making them different from the United States. Both have remained autocracies to the present date.

Indonesia is a similar situation where they had “elections” which were not free or fair before 1998. But Indonesia had no history of democracy before then. Suharto resigned after the 1997 financial crisis. Indonesia has since transitioned to an illiberal democracy.

The obvious examples

Nazi Germany is the obvious example of a fairly mature democracy falling to authoritarianism. But there are some major differences:

1. Hitler never won more than 40% of the vote; he was very unpopular.
2. Within 6 months, democracy was dead. Federalism was destroyed.
3. The Nazis won power through a coalition with the centrists.
4. The rise of the Nazis occurred as a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles, following World War I.

So I don’t think Nazi Germany is similar to the situation the United States is in right now. But Nazi Germany was not wealthy by the standards of the day.

Mussolini won through a coup, so it is not like our situation in the slightest.

China under Chiang Kai-Shek was a military dictatorship with no history of democracy. It does not count under my criteria.

Prayut Chan-o-cha in Thailand came to power through a coup, so he is not relevant to the situation with Trump.

No real examples

There is no real example of a state like the United States, a wealthy liberal democracy, falling to fascism through elections. There is no example in history where a wealthy liberal democracy stopped having elections simply because the president said so.

No countries in Africa have been wealthy enough in the last 500 years to compare to the GDP per capita of the United States at the same point in time. So I didn’t even look there for examples.

If Trump cancels elections next year, we are in uncharted waters. There is no case where the head of state of a wealthy democratic country has voluntarily chosen to cancel elections or nullify results. This does not mean he won’t, but it does mean that, for some reason, no country in our situation has led to a lack of elections.

Perhaps this is because of the international web of alliances across the democratic world. The United States restored democracy in some American allies in the 20th century who suffered from coup d’états. Not to say all of our wars in the 20th century were like this, but it’s hard to argue that Noriega should have stayed in power in Panama. The same is true regarding the deposition of the military dictatorship of Hudson Austin in Grenada. Should those countries have remained under military dictatorships as opposed to democracy, just so the United States doesn’t get involved in wars? That is too hard a line for me.

For this reason, I think that would-be dictators in democracies realize that their usurpation of democracy will be toppled by a US intervention, leading them to think twice about such an action. This network of alliances stabilizes the world by creating real consequences against would-be bad actors.

For this reason, I believe that if Trump attempts to stop the midterms or the 2028 presidential election, he would likely face a coup, most national guards would work together to oust him, and there is a high probability that our allies would step in to restore American democracy. If the majority of Americans are opposed to Trump, he will likely lose the majority of his support from the military. If the generals in the branches of the military do not support a coup or the cancellation of elections, they might oust him and Vance by themselves, leading to the Speaker of the House becoming president. The Speaker would know that if he also chose to disrespect the constitution that the generals might remove him as well. All of this assumes that Congress does not simply impeach and remove Trump on the spot.

The only way Trump could successfully topple American democracy is if all of these protections fail. Congress must not remove him from office. Federalism must fail. The military must put Trump ahead of the Constitution. A majority of states with a majority of the people would need to support the usurpation of the Constitution. Our allies would need to not step in to help us topple a dictator, the way America has done for allies multiple times. All of these protections of American democracy would have to have a colossal failure at the same time for Trump to topple the Constitution.

I don’t see that happening.

The most likely future

We are definitely an illiberal democracy at the moment. The police crackdowns in Los Angeles two months ago, looking for “illegal immigrants,” and the national guard cracking down on Washington, D.C., today are horrendous. There is a long history of the criminalization of homelessness in the United States, where local police arrest and move homeless people outside of the city where they are living. This is obviously horrible, and any decent human being opposes such actions. What Trump is doing is taking this long-standing policy and moving it up to the federal level in Washington, D.C.

The ICE raids in Los Angeles go back a long way. ICE has been raiding workplaces for years. Deportations of undocumented people stretch back decades. I do not support such actions, and it is not surprising that Trump is continuing these long-standing problems. We need immigration reform to end the long-standing policy of deportations so people can live and work here legally instead of living in the shadows.

The deportations and arrests of homeless people are a continuation of long-standing policies, which Trump is deliberately bringing into the news cycle in order to enrage liberals. They will continue after they are out of the news cycle, and he will keep them in the news cycle as long as he needs to for his own political goals.

This has become a theme on my blog when analyzing Trump and Netanyahu. Both of these people do horrendous actions in order to distract from the bigger picture. The distractions themselves are awful, as they have to be in order to work. The War in Gaza distracts from the Russian Invasion of Ukraine and the impeachment of Benjamin Netanyahu. The DC and LA crackdowns distract from the Epstein List. It keeps our attention focused on the latest atrocity so they retain power.

So it is essential that, as they continue to hurt people with their antics that we keep the conversation focused on the bigger issue they are trying to distract us from.

That is what the crackdowns in DC and LA are about. They are designed to punish cities that voted against Trump and distract from the Epstein List.

I believe America is becoming an illiberal democracy under Donald Trump; that much is obvious. The visa restrictions, police crackdowns, and tariffs are hallmarks of illiberal democracy. The question is whether we will continue elections on schedule, but I’m inclined to say that we will continue for all of the reasons I outlined above. There are too many factors that would have to fail in order for elections to end.

The big question is whether we will be able to return to a liberal democracy status after Trump is out of office. That is up to the American people and who we elect into office, not just for the presidency, but for Congress, governors, state legislatures, and local school boards.

As I’ve been doing a lot of reading, thinking, and studying about democratic backsliding and democratization, I have come to the conclusion that democratization can only happen if the people want it. You don’t have to be wealthy; your country can suffer from some corruption and still be a democracy. You don’t even have to be the best-educated country in the world. Democracy cannot be forced on another country without the people having buy-in. Democratization can only start at home. The most critical factor in whether a country will become or remain a democracy is whether the people desire it.

Do Americans want to live in a liberal democracy?

I’m going to analyze states that have split state governments and explore why they are split.

Alaska

Alaska is listed as a trifecta, but Republicans have a majority in both houses of the state legislature. It is not technically a trifecta because of the status of the coalition.

Arizona

Arizona‘s state legislature has been held by Republicans since 2003, and it has been consistently Republican since 1994. But things might be changing as their governor is a Democrat, both US Senators are Democrats, and they voted for Biden in 2020. Arizona is in the process of a large and historic flip from being solidly Republican to being a swing state.

Kansas

Kansas had an incredibly unpopular governor in the 2010s who led his state into a recession, giving the governorship to Democrat Laura Kelly. The state is, however, heavily Republican.

Kentucky

While Kentucky has been heavily Republican for federal elections since 2000, its state government executive offices have remained competitive, even if the General Assembly has been controlled by Republicans since 2016.

Michigan

Michigan has been fairly consistently Democratic at the federal level since the 1950s. The last year when both US Senate seats were held by Republicans was 1954. They consistently voted for Democrats in every election since 1992 except 2016 and 2024. Their executive offices have been competitive since the early 1990s. Republicans eked out a small majority in the State House last year, but there was a Democratic trifecta from 2022-2023, the first Democratic trifecta since 1983. Michigan remains a competitive state. Their State Senate was consistently held by Republicans from 1983-2023, while the House has been Republican for most of the time since 2010. When your legislature is consistently one way but state executive offices vote another way… I smell gerrymandering.

Minnesota

Minnesota has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1976. Since 1932, it has only voted Republican in 1952, 1956, and 1972. Its governors were competitive, but in the last gubernatorial election, Governor Tim Walz won with a 10-point margin. Despite this, the legislature has been competitive since 2000. Never underestimate the ability of Democrats to throw away an easy trifecta in the spirit of fairness. Democrats act as if they have a humiliation kink sometimes…

Nevada

Nevada is a fascinating state politically. Their state legislature has remained fairly consistently Democratic since the 1930s. The only Republican trifecta since 1933 was in 2015. They have been a bellwether state for the presidency, voting for the winner in every election since 1904 except for 1908, 1976, and 2016. There has been at least one Democratic US Senator from Nevada since 1987. That being said, state executive offices had a spell from 1983 to the present where they swung pretty randomly between Democrats and Republicans.

North Carolina

North Carolina used to be heavily Democratic until 2010. 2011 was the first year in which both houses of the legislature were held by Republicans since 1871. The state legislature swung heavily Republican starting in 2011, and it has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1968, with the exceptions of 1976 and 2008. State executive offices, however, have remained mostly Democratic to the present date, which has been true since Reconstruction. This used to be true across the South, and North Carolina and Kentucky are the only states in the region for which this has remained true.

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania is similar to Michigan. Its state legislature has stayed consistently Republican since the Civil War, with only a few times when the State Senate has been held by Democrats since then, in 1937, 1961, 1971-1980, and 1993. At the same time, they voted Democratic in every election from 1992-2012, and their state executive offices have mostly been held by Democrats. Their US House flipped from 12D-7R in 2008 to 12R-7D in 2010. It reeks of gerrymandering, which has prevented the Democrats from gaining a trifecta in Pennsylvania since 1993. Given how they had a Democratic governor in 2010, this fits into my humiliation kink theory.

Vermont

While being extremely democratic in every other way since the 1990s, Vermont consistently elects Republican governors. There hasn’t been a point where all executive offices were held by one party since 1983, and there hasn’t been a time when every executive office, the state legislature, and both senators were held by one party since 1972. They like their moderate Republican Governors and their leftist U.S. Senator. Vermont is (in?) a weird state.

Virginia

Virginia was heavily Democratic until the 1970s as part of Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Since the 1990s, their legislature has been mostly Republican, except right now, where both chambers are controlled by Democrats; however, their governor right now is Glenn Youngkin, who beat out former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe in 2021. McAuliffe was the DNC chair in 2002, the first election where Republicans won a Federal trifecta since 1952. Similar to their US Senator Tim Kaine, who was DNC chair in 2010 when Democratic turnout fell off a cliff. Virginia Democrats like to nominate their former failed DNC chairs. At least there haven’t been any failed DNC chairs from Virginia since Tim Kaine blew it in 2010… so I think I dare to be hopeful about the future of Virginia politics. Virginia Democrats have a large humiliation kink. I will not be taking questions.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin is like Michigan and Pennsylvania, forming our trifecta of the 2016 victory of Donald Trump. It voted Democratic in every presidential election from 1988-2012 until swinging slightly Republican in 2016. Their legislature has been heavily Republican since 2010 as part of a brutal gerrymander which was somehow done by a Democratic trifecta. Yet more evidence of a widespread humiliation kink among multiple State Democratic Parties. Never underestimate the ability of Democrats to shoot themselves in the foot. They haven’t had two Republican senators since 1956. It has been consistently competitive since the Great Depression.

Conclusion

There are several main factors behind divided state governments as I have explored in this piece:

• Idiotic Republican governors: Kansas
• New England being weird: Vermont
• Gerrymandered state legislatures in competitive states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin
• Southern split: Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia
• Democrats shooting themselves in the foot: Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin
• A major state swing in the process: Arizona
• Bellwether: Nevada

So there are many reasons why a state could be split between parties, not just one unifying factor.

Electoral strategy remains essential for capturing and retaining power.

Most importantly, Democrats need to fight their humiliation kink and replace it with a victory kink.

There is a clear correlation between these four factors, but I want to tear apart the issues.

When dividing countries up into true or false based on World Governance Indicators, we find that the largest group of countries are corrupt, undemocratic, poor, have a restrictive visa policy (fewer than 100 nationalities can arrive fully visa-free), have a weak passport (can travel to fewer than 100 countries without any form of visa), and are poorly educated (the average citizen has gone to school for less than 9 years).

There are 30 countries in the next largest group which are the opposite. Clean democracies with strong economies, open visa policies, strong passports, and are well educated.

So the question becomes, which is doing most of the work? Democracy or corruption?

When it comes to wealth, the main factor is corruption. 8 countries are corrupt democracies. They have restrictive visa policies and weak passports, and they are poor. They are also poorly educated.

Remove visa policies

cc     va     GDP per capita  Mean Years of Schooling
False  False  False           False                      60
True   True   True            True                       39
False  False  False           True                       21
       True   False           False                      17
True   True   False           False                      12
False  True   False           True                       10
True   True   False           True                       10
              True            False                       9
       False  True            True                        6
False  True   True            True                        4
       False  True            False                       2
True   False  True            False                       2
False  False  True            True                        1
True   False  False           False                       1
                              True                        1

While corruption and democracy are clearly very correlated, corruption appears to be a larger factor than democracy or education levels for economic well-being.

Major factor for visa policy

So this might sound like an excuse that human rights and democracy do not matter, but not so fast. Democracy is still important! Democracies tend to be less corrupt which drives economic growth. By being more democratic leading to a better educated population, most wealthy countries are democracies, but not all, which is how we know the reduction in corruption as observed in most democracies are intertwined.

While democracy is clearly tied to cleanliness, it is not a prerequisite for lower corruption.

But what about when it comes to your passport’s strength? Is it more important to be democratic, low corruption, or wealthy? (see the appendix if you are confused about the table) I have cut the table only to rows with at least 5 relevant countries. The rest is not important.

cc     va     GDP per capita  Visa free for passport  Visa free to enter  Mean Years of Schooling
False  False  False           False                   False               False                      49
True   True   True            True                    True                True                       30
False  False  False           False                   False               True                       15
       True   False           False                   False               False                      10
True   True   True            True                    False               True                        9
                                                      True                False                       7
False  False  False           False                   True                False                       6
True   True   False           True                    True                True                        6
                              False                   False               False                       5

From what we can see from this data it appears that we still have a trend that clean wealthy democracies have open visa policies and strong passports. We also find that corrupt poor autocracies have restrictive visa policies and weak passports.

Corrupt democracies tend to be poor, but they also tend to have restrictive visa policies and weak passports.

Being well educated alone doesn’t make a major difference on economic growth or passport strength. The better educated people need to clean up their government in order to see improvements.

We also find in this table that being well educated is more important for passport strength as opposed to having an open visa policy.

There are a few clean well-educated wealthy democracies with strong passports, strong economies, and restrictive visa policies. These countries are former British colonies.

Simply opening up your borders with a less restrictive visa policy without cleaning up your government will not lead to a strong passport.

Clean autocracies are rare, but they tend to be rich, have a restrictive visa policy, and have weak passports.

Proposed mechanism

Let’s say you are starting out at the bottom of the heap, your country is corrupt, undemocratic, poor, poorly educated, you have a weak passport, and a restrictive visa policy.

Where do you begin?

Start with your government. Remove the autocrat and transition your government to democracy first.

Once your government is democratic, elect leaders who will focus on cleaning up your government while investing in education to keep people in school as long as possible.

As your democratic government is cleaning up your economy, loosen visa requirements.

As your government is cleaned up and corruption is lowered, your economy will grow.

This has been the strategy used in Latin America and former Russian colonies in Eastern Europe. It works. Even though most of Latin America has problems with lower education levels and their economies are in the middle of the global spectrum, they still have powerful passports. Europe democratized, voted in reformers to clean up corruption, they had no issue with their education levels, and their economies have grown. Both regions have seen their travel freedom increase quickly, and Latin America and Eastern European passports can generally travel to between 100-150 countries without any visa. This proves that democracy is more important than corruption or economic growth. Every Middle Eastern country except Israel and the United Arab Emirates are visa-exempt to fewer than 100 countries, despite having a large GDP per capita. Democracy is more important than economics or corruption when it comes to global passport strength.

In terms of strengthening your passport, we can see that reducing corruption, having an open visa policy, and being democratic is more important than income in terms of strengthening your passport. So if your goal is having a strong passport, focus on democracy, corruption, visa-free policies, and education. The money will come.

If you start with cleaning up your government, but you do not make it a democracy, some people will likely become very rich, and education will be well-funded, but the wealth will only cement the autocrat into power further, harming civil liberties. This will mean your passport will not strengthen, and your visa policy will be restrictive, harming your tourism industry. We see that the Gulf States worked on corruption first, without democratization. While they became rich, they did not see their travel freedom grow as fast as in Eastern Europe.

For this reason, start with democracy, and vote in people who will clean up the government. That is the best method for economic development and improving your passport’s power.

Appendix: Data notes

• cc and va are from the World Governance Indicators. False means the value is less than 0, True means the value is greater than 0. Larger is better. cc is for corruption, va is voice and accountability.
• GDP per capita is from the World Bank. True means the country’s GDP per capita is over $10,000.
• Visa free to enter counts how many nationalities can travel to that country. True means at least 100 nationalities have full visa-free access to that country.
• Visa free for passport means that nationality can travel to at least 100 other countries without any form of visa.
• Mean Years of Schooling. True means that the average person has at least a 9th grade education.

The table counts how many countries have the attributes in each row. I am assuming that if more countries have an attribute, than it is more likely to occur, and is not random.