Measure of the state of democracy in 167 countries

The Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index map for 2019[1] Full democracies 9.01–10 8.01–9 Flawed democracies 7.01–8 6.01–7 Hybrid regimes 5.01–6 4.01–5 Authoritarian regimes 3.01–4 2.01–3 0–2 No data ?

The Democracy Index is an index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a UK-based company. It intends to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries, of which 166 are sovereign states and 164 are UN member states.

The index was first published in 2006, with updates for 2008, 2010 and later years. The index is based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories, measuring pluralism, civil liberties and political culture. In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index categorises each country into one of four regime types: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes.

Method

As described in the report,[2] the democracy index is a weighted average based on the answers of 60 questions, each one with either two or three permitted alternative answers. Most answers are experts' assessments. Some answers are provided by public-opinion surveys from the respective countries. In the case of countries for which survey results are missing, survey results for similar countries, and expert assessments are used in order to fill in gaps.

The questions are grouped into five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. Each answer is converted to a score, either 0 or 1, or for the three-answer questions, 0, 0.5 or 1. With the exceptions mentioned below, within each category, the scores are added, multiplied by ten, and divided by the total number of questions within the category. There are a few modifying dependencies, which are explained much more precisely than the main rule procedures. In a few cases, an answer yielding zero for one question voids another question; e.g. if the elections for the national legislature and head of government are not considered free (question 1), then the next question, "Are elections... fair?", is not considered, but automatically scored zero. Likewise, there are a few questions considered so important that a low score on them yields a penalty on the total score sum for their respective categories, namely:

"Whether national elections are free and fair"; "The security of voters"; "The influence of foreign powers on government"; "The capability of the civil servants to implement policies".

The five category indices, which are listed in the report, are then averaged to find the Democracy Index for a given country. Finally, the Democracy Index, rounded to two decimals, decides the regime type classification of the country.

The report discusses other indices of democracy, as defined, e.g. by Freedom House, and argues for some of the choices made by the team from the Economist Intelligence Unit. In this comparison, a higher emphasis is placed on the public opinion and attitudes, as measured by surveys, but on the other hand, economic living standards are not weighted as one criterion of democracy (as seemingly some other investigators have done).[3][4]

The report is widely cited in the international press as well as in peer reviewed academic journals.[5]

Classification definitions

Full democracies are nations where civil liberties and fundamental political freedoms are not only respected but also reinforced by a political culture conducive to the thriving of democratic principles. These nations have a valid system of governmental checks and balances, an independent judiciary whose decisions are enforced, governments that function adequately, and diverse and independent media. These nations have only limited problems in democratic functioning.[6]

Flawed democracies are nations where elections are fair and free and basic civil liberties are honoured but may have issues (e.g. media freedom infringement and minor suppression of political opposition and critics). These nations have significant faults in other democratic aspects, including underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance.[6]

Hybrid regimes are nations with regular electoral frauds, preventing them from being fair and free democracies. These nations commonly have governments that apply pressure on political opposition, non-independent judiciaries, widespread corruption, harassment and pressure placed on the media, anaemic rule of law, and more pronounced faults than flawed democracies in the realms of underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance.[6]

Authoritarian regimes are nations where political pluralism is nonexistent or severely limited. These nations are often absolute monarchies or dictatorships, may have some conventional institutions of democracy but with meagre significance, infringements and abuses of civil liberties are commonplace, elections (if they take place) are not fair and free, the media is often state-owned or controlled by groups associated with the ruling regime, the judiciary is not independent, and censorship and suppression of governmental criticism are commonplace.[6]

Democracy Index by country 2019

Listing by country is available on The Economist website.[7]

Recent changes

In 2016, the United States was downgraded from a full democracy to a flawed democracy;[8] its score, which had been declining for some years, crossed the threshold from 8.05 in 2015 to 7.98 in 2016. The report states that this was caused by a myriad of factors dating back to at least the late 1960s which have eroded Americans' trust in governmental institutions.[8][9][10]

The 2017 Democracy index registered the worst year for global democracy since 2010–11. Asia was the region with the largest decline since 2016. Venezuela was downgraded from a hybrid regime to an authoritarian regime.

Australia (ranked 8th) and Taiwan (ranked 33rd) both legalised same-sex marriage in 2017. In China, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, further entrenched his power by writing his contribution to the Chinese Communist Party's ideology, dubbed Xi Jinping Thought, into the party's constitution. Moldova was downgraded from a flawed democracy to a hybrid regime as a result of problematic elections. By contrast, Armenia was re-upgraded from an authoritarian regime to a hybrid regime[11] as a result of constitutional changes that shifted power from the presidency to parliament.[12]

In 2017, the Gambia was re-upgraded from an authoritarian regime to a hybrid regime after Yahya Jammeh, who was president from 1996 to 2017, was defeated by Adama Barrow, an opposition candidate in the 2016 presidential elections.

In 2019, France, Portugal and Chile were upgraded from flawed democracy to full democracy. In fact, this is a re-upgrade for the former two, which suffered from the eurozone crisis many years ago. By contrast, Malta was downgraded from a full democracy to a flawed democracy. Thailand was re-upgraded from a hybrid regime to a flawed democracy.[7] Algeria was re-upgraded from an authoritarian regime to a hybrid regime.

Criticism

The Democracy Index has been criticised for lacking transparency and accountability beyond the numbers. To generate the index, the Economist Intelligence Unit has a scoring system in which various experts are asked to answer 60 questions and assign each reply a number, with the weighted average deciding the ranking. However, the final report does not indicate what kinds of experts, nor their number, nor whether the experts are employees of the Economist Intelligence Unit or independent scholars, nor the nationalities of the experts.[13]

Democracy Index by regime type

The following table gives the number and percentage of countries and the percentage of the world population for each regime type in 2018:[14]

Type of regime Score (s) Number of

countries Percentage of

countries Percentage of

world population Full democracies s > 8 20 12.0 4.5 Flawed democracies 6 < s ≤ 8 55 32.9 43.2 Hybrid regimes 4 < s ≤ 6 39 23.4 16.7 Authoritarian regimes s ≤ 4 53 31.7 35.6

World population refers to the total population of the 167 countries covered by the Index. Since this excludes only microstates, this is nearly equal to the entire estimated world population.

Democracy Index by region

The following table gives the index average by world region, and the number of covered countries in 2019. Note that some regional groups (e.g. Eastern Europe and Asia and Australasia) are very heterogeneous and composed of full democracies as well as authoritarian regimes:

See also

Notes

^ The region is defined by the official EIU report, for example grouping Turkey in Western Europe and all post-Soviet states in Eastern Europe. ^ An exact score of 8.00 is considered a Flawed democracy per the EIU website.