Atlas / Claim checks / Is Cuba a dictatorship
Is Cuba a dictatorship? The claim, measured
“Cuba is a dictatorship, whatever its health system achieved.”
Measured against Castroism and Nordic Social Democracy
Strongest case for the claim
One legal party, no competing candidates, no independent press or unions, and imprisonment of dissidents for six decades. The constitution names the party the superior guiding force of society and the state.
Strongest case against
Life expectancy and literacy match or exceed those of far richer countries, health care and education are free at the point of use and universal, and the medical internationalism programme has deployed hundreds of thousands of personnel abroad.
What the coordinates show. Castroism scores −09 on economics and +09 on authority. Both parts of the question are describing real and separate measurements, and the argument almost always consists of one side citing the economic axis and the other citing the authority axis. The atlas cannot tell you how to weigh them, and it can stop you pretending the other one does not exist.
The six measurements
| Axis | Cuban Communism | Folkhemmet | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | −09 | −05 | 4 |
| CU · Social and cultural order | −01 | −06 | 5 |
| AU · Organisation of power | +09 | −06 | 15 |
| SC · Scale of decision | +09 | +02 | 7 |
| ID · Rule of membership | 00 | −04 | 4 |
| CH · Method and tempo | +07 | −08 | 15 |
Both cases are stated because the atlas does not settle arguments by assertion. Where the underlying dispute is conceptual rather than factual, that is said plainly rather than resolved.
Full comparisonCheck it yourself
The interactive atlas holds 319 organisations on six independent axes with the evidence for every score. Paste any claim that equates two political things and it will find them and report the measurement.