RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Paraguay, Ecuador, Mexico, and Tunisia were relegated from “deficient democracies” to the status of “hybrid regimes,” according to a study by the British group The Economist published last Thursday. Bangladesh, Senegal, Ukraine, and Hong Kong also belong to this category.
A hybrid regime means that the country has features that prevent it from being considered a democracy (albeit deficient), but not an autocracy. It is a category situated between authoritarianism and democracy, one step below “authoritarian regimes.”
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The Economist uses five categories to rate democracy in the countries evaluated: electoral process and pluralism; government functioning; political participation; political culture; and civil liberties. Depending on the rating, a country can be considered a flat democracy, a poor democracy, a hybrid regime, or an autocracy.
According to this study by the group’s research and analysis section (EIU), the democracy index in 2021 went from 5.37 in 2020 to 5.28, the most significant annual drop since 2010. According to the document, Spain went in 2021 from having the status of “full democracy” to “poor democracy”, a group to which France, the United States, Israel, and South Africa also belong.
“The results reflect the negative impact of the pandemic on democracy and freedom in the world for the second consecutive year, with the considerable extension of state power and the erosion of individual freedoms,” the study said.
Less than half of the world’s population lived in democracy in 2021, with only 21 countries out of 165 enjoying “full democracy,” a status that both Spain and Chile lost. Sweden, Luxembourg, and the United Kingdom (which loses two positions and approaches deficient democracies) are in the first category of the ranking, as well as Costa Rica, Uruguay, South Korea, Japan, and Mauritius.
The “authoritarian regimes” are Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, Algeria, Egypt, Russia, Rwanda, Vietnam, and China. At the bottom of the list, Afghanistan, retaken six months ago by the Taliban, became the least democratic country.