Europe maintains fragile democratic stability amid global decline, new study finds
Despite divisions between east and west, Europe's standards of functioning democracy remain high, even as global standards decline, according to a study released on Thursday by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
The latest Democracy Index shows that after a year of elections worldwide, global democracy has weakened, with 2024 continuing a trend of "democratic malaise", the report finds.
'While autocracies seem to be gaining strength, as shown by the index trend since 2006, the world's democracies are struggling,' Joan Hoey, director for the Democracy Index said in a release.
The annual study assesses five categories - electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, political culture - giving each country a score out of 10.
Based on this, countries are classified as full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, or authoritarian regimes. This year, Norway topped the rankings with 9.81, while Afghanistan ranked lowest at 0.25.
The sharpest declines were in government functioning and electoral process, with the average for the latter falling by 0.08 points compared to 2023, which the study considers 'was especially disappointing given that so many countries went to the polls in 2024'.
Europe presented a mixed picture. Eastern Europe saw a slight decline, while Western Europe improved by a marginal 0.01 points.
Nine of the world's top ten democracies are in Europe, with New Zealand the only exception in second place.
Western Europe remains the highest-rated region and the only one to recover to pre-pandemic levels. However, the report highlights widespread public discontent, fuelling a shift towards anti-mainstream parties.
According to the study, 'this dissatisfaction is fuelling a growing shift towards anti-mainstream parties, a trend widely illustrated by the many elections across the continent in 2024'. It adds that these elections were marked by a clear rejection of incumbent leaders and a surge in support for anti-establishment and populist political forces.
There were notable shifts within the region: Portugal was upgraded to a "full democracy", while France slipped into the "flawed" category.
Portugal was first downgraded in 2011 and recovered the status of a 'full democracy' in 2019. However, the EUI after considering the limitations on personal freedom resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic downgraded it again in 2020.
France has also been close to the threshold score of 8.00 that separates 'full' from "flawed democracies", falling to the second category in 2010-13, 2015-18 and 2020-21, during what the EUI classifies as "periods of political turbulence in which the administration has faced widespread social unrest and/or internal divisions over policy, which undermined governance'.
The report concludes that France's downgrade this year reflects a deterioration in the score for confidence in government.
Eastern Europe, grouped with Central Asia in the report, saw 'the mildest regression of any region' declining by 0.02 points, to 5.35.
This region saw a milestone as the Czech Republic and Estonia were upgraded from 'flawed democracies' to 'full democracies', gaining full democratic rating for the first time since 2013 when Czech Republic fell from the top category.
By contrast, this year saw Romania downgraded from 'flawed democracy' to 'hybrid regime' status, after the cancellation of the presidential election resulted in the country dropping 12 places in the ranking.
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