Trondheim, Norway
The Economist Intelligence Unit has launched the tenth edition of its Democracy Index , based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of the government, political participation and political culture.
According to the score obtained (from 0 to 10) in each of the categories, the countries are classified into: complete democracy, defective democracy, hybrid regime and authoritarian regime.
In the 2017 Democracy Index the average score was 5.48, compared to 5.52 the previous year. Not a single region saw an improvement over 2016 and 89 of the 167 countries participating in the index (which covers almost the entire population of the world) saw their scores decline.
In view of the results, almost half of the world's population lives in a democracy of some kind, although only 4.5% live in what is called "full democracy" (that is, with a score greater than 8 on the index) .
Stockholm, Sweden
At the same time, about a third of the world's population lives under an authoritarian regime , with a large proportion in China
USA it was already lowered in 2016 to the category of "defective democracy", citing "the low esteem in which American voters hold their government, elected representatives and political parties".
At the top of the ranking is Norway , which has held the position of most democratic country since 2010. Of the top 10 full democracies on the list, 7 are European countries (Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Finland, and Switzerland).
Spain ranks 19th in the ranking, being the last of the states considered as complete democracies. Our score fell 0.22 points from last year, which puts us just 0.08 points below the threshold for defective democracy.
Copenhagen, Denmark
In the interval of flawed democracies we find countries like Portugal, Italy, France, Chile, Belgium, United States, Japan or Taiwan.
The hybrid regimens They include Bolivia, Ukraine, Albania, Georgia, Kenya, Nepal, Thailand and Nicaragua, among others.
Finally, at the bottom of the ranking, corresponding to the authoritarian regimes , are countries such as Venezuela, Cameroon, Cuba, Rwanda, Vietnam or North Korea (the last on the list) .
Zürich, Switzerland