Cyprus remains a ‘flawed democracy’

Cyprus has been classed as a ‘flawed democracy’, ranking 37th in the list of countries analysed by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) 2022 Democracy Index.

The position on the table is unchanged since 2021 but shows a drop of 0.05 points, making a score of 7.38 out of ten. The highest ever score was recorded in 2016 with 7.65.

It ranked high with 9.17 on electoral process and pluralism, as well as civil liberties with 8.82.

However, it also recorded low scores on functioning of government (5.36), political participation (6.67) and political culture (6.88)

The Democracy Index, which began in 2006, provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide in 167 independent states and covers almost the entire population of the world and the vast majority of the world’s states.

Based on its scores on a range of indicators within these categories, each country is then classified as one of four types of regime: “full democracy”, “flawed democracy”, “hybrid regime” or “authoritarian regime”.

The overall picture globally, according to the EIU, is one of stagnation, with the global average score remaining essentially unchanged at 5.29 compared with 5.28 in 2021.

“This is a dismal result given that in 2022 the world started to move on from the pandemic-related suppression of individual liberties that persisted through 2020 and 2021,” the report said.

A total of 72 of the 167 countries and territories covered by the model, or 43.1 per cent of the total, can be considered to be democracies.

The number of “full democracies” increased to 24 in 2022, up from 21 in 2021, as Chile, France and Spain rejoined the top-ranked countries, namely those scoring more than 8.00 out of 10.

The number of “flawed democracies” fell by five to 48 in 2022. Of the remaining 95 countries in the index, 59 are “authoritarian regimes”, the same as in 2021, and 36 are classified as “hybrid regimes”, up from 34 the previous year.

The report added that the situation in two countries that are home to more than 20 per cent of the world’s population, China and Russia, took a decisive turn for the worse in 2022.

“Russia recorded the biggest decline in score of any country in the world in 2022. Its invasion of Ukraine was accompanied by all-out repression and censorship at home.

Russia has been on a trajectory away from democracy for a long time and is now acquiring many of the features of a dictatorship,” it said.

Russia scored 2.28, a massive drop from the already low score of 3.24 recorded in the 2021 report.

China scored even lower than Russia with 1.94, dropping from 2.21 in 2021.