Guyana among Caribbean states listed as “flawed democracy” in global index

Guyana is listed as a “flawed democracy” in the latest Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Democracy Index, which considers a number of rankings across different areas, including the electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, political culture and civil liberties.

The Democracy Index provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide for 165 independent states and two territories in 2018. It covers almost the entire population of the world and the vast majority of the world’s states (microstates are excluded). The EIU is the research and analysis division of The Economist Group, the sister company to The Economist newspaper.

According to the report on the index, based on its 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.”