Bangladesh has moved one notch up to rank 75th among 167 countries in the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index 2021, with an unchanged score of 5.99 out of 10.
The annual survey, released on Thursday, rated the state of democracy in nations around the globe based on five categories — electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture and civil liberties.
On the basis of scores in these categories, each country is then classified as either a “full democracy”, “flawed democracy”, “hybrid regime” or “authoritarian regime”.
The index classified Bangladesh as a “hybrid regime” with regular electoral frauds, preventing it from being a fair and free democracy.
Bangladesh held the 76th rank with the same score in the previous index.
Bangladesh improved its score on civil liberties to 5.29 from 4.71 a year ago, but the score on political participation fell to 5.56 from 2020’s 6.11.
Meanwhile, scores in electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government and political culture remained unchanged at 7.42, 6.07 and 5.63, respectively.
Situation in South Asia, worldwide slide in democracy
Bangladesh secured the third position among the seven South Asian countries in the index.
India ranked 46th with an overall score of 6.91 and Sri Lanka ranked 67th with a score of 6.14. Both of them were categorized as “flawed democracies”.
Bhutan did worse than Bangladesh, ranking 81st in the index, while Nepal and Pakistan were further down, holding the 101st and 104th positions, respectively. These countries were classified as “hybrid regimes”, like Bangladesh.
With an overall score of 0.32, Afghanistan, an “authoritarian regime”, was at the very bottom of the global ranking.
Globally, Norway, with an almost-perfect rating of 9.75, held the top spot, followed by New Zealand and Finland.
Democratic standards across the world fell in 2021 amid the pandemic and growing support for authoritarianism to leave just over 45% of the world's population living in a democracy, according to the report.
The index registered its biggest fall since 2010 and set "another dismal record" for the worst global score since it was first produced in 2006.
Less than half – 45.7% – of the world's population now lives in a democracy of some sort, a significant decline from 2020 where the figure was 49.4%.
Even fewer – 6.4% – reside in a "full democracy".
More than a third of the world's population live under authoritarian rule, a large proportion of which are in China.