Guyana ranks 67 and remains a flawed democracy, falling two points on the world global democracy index where some 167 countries were analyzed, the 2022 Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report states.
Rating the state of democracy across 167 countries where the maximum score is 10 and on the basis of five measures —electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties- Guyana had an overall score of 6.34. It fellow below Trinidad at 7.16, Jamaica at 7.13 and Suriname at 6.95.
“The Democracy Index, which began in 2006, provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide in 165 independent states and two territories. This covers almost the entire population of the world and the vast majority of the world’s states (microstates are excluded),” the report titled ‘Democracy Index 2022- Frontline Democracy and the Battle for Ukraine’ explains.
Countries were categorized into four types, based on scores of a range of indicators and then categorized into either Full Democracies, Flawed Democracies, Hybrid Regimes or Authoritarian Regimes.
Guyana received the lowest rating, 5, in the area of political culture and highest, 7.06, for civil liberties. Functioning of government here had a rating of 6.07 out of 10 while political participation was 6.67.
Electoral Process and pluralism was logged at 6.92.
In the Latin America and Caribbean region where 24 countries were assessed, this country ranked 12th, one place behind the Dominican Republic and one above Peru.
Venezuela ranked last in the region at 24 and 147th globally, with its regime type being categorized as authoritarian.
When this country’s ranking is looked at over a 15-year period, not much has changed, as its overage score was 6.1, where the highest score had been 6.67 in the year 2018 and the lowest 5.91 in 2014.
According to the EIU’s measure of democracy, “almost half of the world’s population live in a democracy of some sort (45.3%). Only 8% reside in a “full democracy”, compared with 8.9% in 2015, before the US was demoted from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” in 2016. More than one-third of the world’s population live under authoritarian rule (36.9%), with a large share of them being in China and Russia.
Some 72 of the 167 countries and territories covered by the model, or 43.1% 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 re-joined the top-ranked countries (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.
Guyana, however, isn’t the only country where the scores have not changed much over the years as the report reveals that the “overall the story is one of stagnation, with the global average score remaining essentially unchanged at 5.29 (on a 0-10 scale), 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.
“The stagnation in the global score in 2022 is mirrored, as one would expect, in the regional results,” the report states
Looking at Latin America and the Caribbean, the report says that its score fell from 5.83 in 2021 to 5.79 in 2022.
“Latin America and the Caribbean remains the region with the highest average score outside of North America and western Europe. The region’s score is
bolstered by having some of the world’s strongest democracies, such as Uruguay, Costa Rica and Chile, but they account for only 4% of the region’s total population; meanwhile 45% of the region’s population live in a country that is either a hybrid or an authoritarian regime. Moreover, 62% of Latin Americans reside in a country whose score declined in 2022,” the report says.
Dividing Latin America and the Caribbean into its constituent sub-regions (South America and Central America and the Caribbean), it points out that there is a growing bifurcation in the quality of democracy in the two sub-regions. “South America experienced a sharp decline in its score in 2021, largely owing to the impact of the pandemic, but in 2022 the region’s score increased as restrictions were lifted. Central America and the Caribbean, on the other hand, has recorded a consistent decline in its score starting in 2018, owing largely to developments in Mexico and Nicaragua, with the latter turning into an autocracy in 2018 and the former being downgraded to a hybrid regime in 2021, the document states.
“With some exceptions, Latin Americans have a low level of confidence in state institutions; the region is home to some of the world’s most unequal and corrupt countries. State capacity has also been weakened by the growth of transnational criminal organisations, especially related to the narcotics trade, which is leading to high levels of crime and corruption even in the region’s strongest democracies, such as Chile and Uruguay,” the report states.
Haiti was listed as having the most extreme case of weakening state capacity in the region and it made reference to the assassination of the former president, Jovenel Moïse, in July 2021 and the aftermath, for which the country is still seeing dismal effects today.
The report said that region is a global hub for transnational drug cartels, which pose a significant threat to democracy, as drug trafficking erodes state capacity by making corruption extremely lucrative and expands the use of violence by non-state actors, which, in turn, leads to an erosion of civil liberties as governments seek to address citizens’ demands for more security.
