[citation needed] Healthy democracies can be classified as defective when any of the key components of government are missing or fail to properly link to one another.
All democracies provide universal suffrage, free and fair elections occurring on a recurring basis, a multi-party system, multiple sources of information in the country, universal rights, and voters' decision-making unhindered by country elites or external actors.
[5] Despite progress, enduring legacies like Redlining, Environmental racism, the New Jim Crow, Gerrymandering, decline in unions, overturning Roe v. Wade and the gender pay gap persist.
The state regained some of the autonomy it had lost during the ‘Chaebol Republic’ from 1987 to 1997 and was able to implement reforms in a temporary corporatist framework.
When elected officials are no longer held to constitutional principles due to the deterioration of power held by the judiciary, the nation becomes an illiberal democracy in which the rule of law is damaged or flawed, and the constitutional norms have little or no binding impact on elected officials and their actions.
Constitutional norms are rarely followed and the checks and balances of power required in healthy democracies are undermined.
During the PRI's political dominance in Mexico, the nation was a delegative democracy with the executive branch ruling supreme[10] and the Congress effectively rubber-stamping decisions.
These types of governments can exist when the ruling elite avoid severe rights abuses and do not steal or cancel elections.