Dhaka, Feb 11 (Agency) Bangladesh’s ranking has moved up by one position in the latest Democracy Index for 2021 released by the Economist Intelligence Unit. It is now ranked 75th among 167 countries. The country scored 5.99 on a scale of 10 in 2021. With this score, released on Thursday, Bangladesh has been placed among the ‘hybrid regime’. According to the unit, countries falling in the hybrid regime display substantial irregularities preventing free and fair elections.
In such countries the rule of law is weak, level of corruption is high, civil society is weak and typically there is harassment of and pressure on journalists and the judiciary is not independent. Bangladesh’s score for civil liberties improved from 4.71 in 2020 to 5.29 in 2021 but its score on political participation declined from 6.11 to 5.56. However, its score on the parameters of electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government and democratic plural culture remained unchanged from last year. Out of 167 countries, only 21 countries have been put under the category of full democracy while 53 are under the flawed democracy category. Thirty-four countries are counted among hybrid democracies and 59 are authoritarian governments.
The score for 74 countries showed a decline on the democracy index compared to 2020. The report says that more than one third of the world’s population live under authoritarian rule. Norway is ranked at the top of the democracy index followed by New Zealand, Finland and Iceland. Afghanistan occupies the bottom place in the index followed by Myanmar and North Korea in 2nd and 3rd position from the bottom. The democracy index is based on five categories namely electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture. The ranking is decided based on 60 indicators grouped into these five categories on a scale of 1-10.