The economist: Armenia 114th in democracy index

YEREVAN, March 26. /ARKA/. The Economist Intelligence Unit's recently published annual report on the state of global democracy for 2012. 

Armenia is the 114th in the ranking and is next to countries like Nepal, Iraq and Haiti. This index provides a snapshot of the current state of democracy worldwide for 165 independent states and two territories.The index uses five criteria: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. Each nation is categorized across gradient levels of regimes: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes. Armenia is once again among “hybrid regimes”.

The scale of 0 to 10 was used to assess the democracy level for each country. According to the assessment, Armenia’s average score has not changed since 2008 and is still at 4.09.

The country’s lowest indicators are those on political culture. Armenia is seen to have the same level of political culture as Mali, Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo. Armenia scored low also in terms of the functioning of government. The country’s score on electoral process is 4.33, similar to scoring of Singapore, Iraq and Libya.

According to The Economist, the only field where Armenia is more or less successful is civil liberties (slightly lower than 6).

None of the former soviet countries appears on the list of “full democracies”. Baltic countries and Moldova (67th) are considered “flawed democracies”. Apart from Armenia, Ukraine (80th) and Georgia (93rd) are among “hybrid regimes”. 

Russia (122nd), Belarus (141st) and Azerbaijan (139th) are seen “authoritarian regimes”. Turkey ranked 88th and Iran 158th.

Norway tops the ranking, followed by Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Canada, Finland, and Netherlands. The least democratic countries are Uzbekistan Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Chad, Guinea-Bissau and Northern Korea. –0--