EIU Democracy Index-2016: Bangladesh ranked 84th
It was 86th in 2015 with the same score
Bangladesh has moved two notches up in the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) Democracy Index-2016, though the country's score on the state of democracy remains static as compared to 2015.
It has ranked 84th among 167 countries with a score of 5.73 out of 10. It, however, continues to be in the “hybrid regime” category, showed the index released on the website of London-based magazine The Economist yesterday.
The country was 86th in the 2015 index.
The EIU is the research and analysis division of The Economist Group, the sister company of The Economist newspaper.
Norway holds the top position with 9.93 points while North Korea falls on the bottom with 1.08 points, according to the index, which also showed a “democratic recession” across the globe.
The average global score fell to 5.52 from 5.55 in 2015. Some 72 countries experienced a decline in their total score compared with 2015, almost twice as many as the countries which recorded an improvement (38).
Fifty seven countries stagnated, with their scores remaining unchanged compared with 2015, it said.
Seventy six of the 167 countries covered by the model, or 45.5 percent of all countries, can be considered to be democracies, according to the index.
The Democracy Index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture.
Based on their scores on a range of indicators within these categories, each country is then itself classified as one of four types of regimes: “full democracy”; “flawed democracy”; “hybrid regime”; and “authoritarian regime”.
The number of “full democracies” has declined from 20 in 2015 to 19 in 2016's Democracy Index.
The US, a standard-bearer of democracy for the world, has become a “flawed democracy”, as popular confidence in the functioning of public institutions has declined. The score for the US fell to 7.98 from 8.05 in 2015, causing the world's leading economic superpower to slip below the 8.00 threshold for a “full democracy”.
Of the remaining 91 countries in the index, 51 are “authoritarian” and 40 (up from 37 in 2015) are considered to be “hybrid regimes”.