Norway tops global democracy rankings while Russia suffers biggest slide after ... trends now
Norway has come top of this year's global democracy rankings – while the US slipped down and Russia suffered the world's biggest slide after invading Ukraine last February.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has released its global democracy index for 2022, in which 167 countries saw their state of democracy ranked on a scale from one to ten across five different categories.
The Index aims to give a 'snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide' and evaluates 'electoral process and pluralism', 'functioning of government', 'political participation', 'political culture' and 'civil liberties'.
The county is then put into one of four categories: 'full democracy', 'flawed democracy', 'hybrid regime' or 'authoritarian regime'.
This year Norway topped the chart with an overall score of 9.81 and other Nordic countries also dominated – with Sweden in 4th place (9.39), Finland in 5th (9.29), Denmark in 6th (9.28).
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has released its global democracy index for 2022, with Norway topping the rankings
This year Norway (pictured is Oslo) topped the chart with an overall score of 9.81
Afghanistan remains at the bottom of the table with a score of 0.32.
In 2021, Afghanistan was declared the most undemocratic country by the Index after the swift rise of the Taliban following the chaotic US withdrawal in the summer.
The global average score was 5.29 out of 10 - compared with 5.28 in 2021 and 5.44 pre-pandemic.
This year only eight per cent of countries (24) are said to live in a 'full democracy' - compared with 8.9 per cent in 2015.
However, this was more than in 2021 (21 countries) as Chile, France and Spain rejoined the ranking mainly due to a reversal of pandemic restrictions - with Greece also nearing full democratic status.
59 countries are classed as being under 'authoritarian regimes' - making up over a third of the world's population at 36.9 per cent.
The Index states that this conclusion is a 'disappointing one' for democracy as predictions suggested it could have been higher following the world's comeback after Covid.
The evaluation states: 'Governments around the world lifted many pandemic-related restrictions in 2022, resulting in improvements to several indicator scores across many countries, so it is striking that there was not a rebound in the index total score.'
But while Western Europe dominated the table by taking eight out of the top ten places, countries such as Russia and the US dropped down the rankings.
Russia recorded the world's biggest decline following
