Population, Government and Placement in the World Cup Finals

This graph expands on the earlier posts’ documentation of the predominance of democratic nations in the FIFA World Cup over the years.

As the cascade of population bubbles shows, the rise in totalitarian regimes during the cold war years is evident in the cluster made up of primarily the USSR, Romania, and Hungary while the only winners in non-full democracies were the military-run Brazil in 1970 and Argentina in 1978. As of 1990, the only exceptions to the democratic dominance are the weak performances by China in 2002, Iran in 2006 and 2014, and Saudi Arabia in from 1994 to 2006 — none of whom made it out of the group stage.

Another notable bubble — the “other” 5.4 billion people who live in nations that are not participating in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Perhaps many of them are more interested in the 2015 Cricket World Cup.