At the global level, the democracy index stabilized in 2022, according to the British study by “The Economist”. She reviewed 167 different countries.
SourceAFP
© CEM OZDEL / ANADOLU AGENCY / Anadolu Agency via AFP
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LRussia is the country in the world where democracy has declined the most in 2022 ahead of Burkina Faso and Haiti, according to a study published Thursday, February 2 by the British group The Economist producing a democracy index in 167 countries. Following the February 24 invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s Democracy Index saw the biggest drop in 2022, dropping it 22 places in the world rankings of this study by the group’s research and analysis division. (EIU), which ranks Russia 146ᵉ.
The war in Ukraine “exposed the divisions between developed democracies that support Ukraine and many developing countries that have chosen not to take sides,” the study points out. Among the “authoritarian regimes”, other countries like Haiti “which seems to be in a state of internal dissolution” (135ᵉ, – 16 places) and the Burkina Faso (127ᵉ, – 16 places), where “an Islamist insurrection caused the state to lose control of part of the territory” also saw their index drop sharply in 2022.
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Conversely, Thailand is the country that experienced the strongest index increase in 2022, advancing 17 places to rank 55ᵉ in the ranking.
8% of the world’s population in “full democracy”
The lifting of restrictions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic has boosted the score of many countries including France (22ᵉ, stable), Spain (22ᵉ also, + 2 places) and Chile (19ᵉ, + 6 places) which are back in the group of “complete democracies”. At the regional level, Western Europe is the only region to decisively improve its score in 2022. “Those of North America, Asia, Australasia, Eastern Europe East and Sub-Saharan Africa stagnated, and those in Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa suffered declines,” the study adds.
At the global level, the 2022 democracy index fell from 5.28 in 2021 to 5.29 in 2022. A stabilization after the drop of 0.09 points last year. As in 2021, less than half of the world’s population lived in a democracy in 2022 and only 8% in a “complete democracy”, in a ranking still led by Norway and closed by Afghanistan.
The study identifies five categories of criteria for establishing the ranking: electoral processes and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture and civil liberties.
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