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Faculty Advisor

Dr. Maria Ilcheva

Author Biographical Statement

Anastasiya Tsapenko is a recent graduate from Florida International University, graduating in the Class of 2023. Anastasiya graduated Summa Cum Laude, with a Bachelor’s Degree double majoring in English with a Writing and Rhetoric track and Political Science, a minor in International Relations, and a Certificate in Professional Public Writing. She also graduated from the Honors College of FIU. She is a proud member of Phi Beta Kappa with a GPA of 4.0 and Phi Kappa Phi. She was the 2022-2023 recipient of the Jelke Family Scholarship. Anastasiya plans to continue her education and earn her doctorate degree.

Abstract

This analysis is in the field of Political Science, specifically Comparative Politics. This paper analyzes the scores of two countries Finland and Belarus on the 2022 World Happiness Report. Finland, known as the happiest country in the world is highly esteemed as a leader in democracy, healthcare, and education, and ranks number 1 on the World Happiness Report with a score of 7.821. Belarus*, a former Soviet Republic famously known for its lack of free and fair elections, ranks number 65 with a score of 5.821 (Helliwell et al., 2022). According to the report, the asterisk near Belarus signifies that the ranking is based on survey reports from 2019, and not from 2020 or 2021 (Helliwell et al., 2022). This analysis explains the gap between the two countries and identifies factors responsible for the stark differences between the scores. Several factors identified that explained the differences in the scores were related to politics, such as formal political institutions (political structure within both countries), political informal institutions (political culture), election processes (validity of elections), and the presence of a steady modern democracy or lack thereof, determined by the presence of four requirements. Another important factor identified was economic performance and the presence or lack of economic stability. This paper concludes that although Belarus presents itself as a democracy, the country does not in fact qualify as a modern democracy because of its inability to pass the requirements of a modern democracy.

DOI

10.25148/URJ.020120

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