Why Uruguay is the only full democracy in South America

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On February 10, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU, an independent business unit of The Economist magazine that analyzes countries and markets) published the 2021 Democracy Index, a ranking that assesses the state of democracy in 167 countries.

Depending on the score achieved, each country can be placed in one of four categories, ranging from the highest to the lowest democracy: full democracy, defective democracy, hybrid regime, and authoritarian regime.

According to the EIU, Uruguay scored 8.85 points and ranks 13th among the only 21 full democracies in the world, between Canada (8.87) and Luxembourg (8.68). In Latin America, only Costa Rica, with 8.07 points and 20th place, is in the group of full democracies along with Uruguay.

Globally, the strongest democracies are Norway (9.75), New Zealand (9.37), Finland (9.27), Sweden (9.26) and Iceland (9.18).

Uruguay’s inclusion in the group of full democracies in the world is explained by its performance in the pillars that make up the Democracy Index. For the EIU, Uruguay’s electoral process is perfect, scoring 10 points (only 11 of the 167 countries achieved this score).

Regarding the other pillars, Uruguay scored 9.71 points for respect for civil liberties, 8.75 points for political culture, 8.57 points for government functioning, and 7.22 points for political participation.

With the exception of the last item, where it is surpassed by Costa Rica by 0.56 points, Uruguay received the best score of all the countries in the region in the other areas.

Uruguay’s performance in the EIU Democracy Index has been positive since 2006. In that year it achieved the lowest score (7.96), but since then it has steadily improved (except in 2018, when it dropped from 8.17 to 8.12).

The measurements for the last three years show a more significant increase: 8.38 in 2019, 8.61 in 2020, and 8.85 in 2021, the last of which places Uruguay among the 10 countries that have improved the most in the last year, according to the EIU report (the other nine are Singapore, Zambia, Indonesia, Qatar, Moldova, India, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Montenegro, and Guyana).

In addition to Uruguay and Costa Rica, the only full democracies in the region, seven Latin American countries were placed in the second “democracy with shortcomings” category: Chile (25th), Brazil (47th), Panama (48th), Argentina (50th), Colombia (59th), the Dominican Republic (60th) and Peru (71st).

The most worrying case among these countries is that of Chile, which is no longer a full democracy (a state it had reached in 2019 and 2020), but has returned to being a flawed democracy.

Seven other Latin American countries also belong to the third category, that of hybrid regimes: Paraguay (77th), El Salvador (79th), Ecuador (81st), Mexico (86th), Honduras (92nd), Bolivia (98th), and Guatemala (99th).

Finally, only three countries were classified as authoritarian regimes: Nicaragua (140th), Cuba (142nd), and Venezuela (151st). For the latter three countries, the EIU considers that there is a lack of transparency and plurality in their electoral processes (0.00).

Thus, Latin America has an average score of 5.83. In other words: If it were a country, it would be under a hybrid regime.

Outside of Western Europe and North America, Latin America is the region with the highest average score, but its historical lead over Asia and Eastern Europe has shrunk.

This is the first time Latin America has achieved an average score below 6 points (5.83), and the decline has continued since 2015, when it achieved an average score of 6.37.

The fact that only two countries in the region improved their score compared to 2020 (Uruguay with +0.24 and the Dominican Republic with +0.13) is testimony to the crisis of democracy in Latin America.

Finally, the 2021 Democracy Index data for Latin America are not necessarily bad, but they show how far we are from the ideal.

Although almost 80% of the region’s population lives under regimes that are considered democratic according to the Democracy Index classification, only 1.3% of Latin America’s population lives in a full democracy, which is the case of Costa Rica and Uruguay.

With information from El Observador