LatAm: From Full Democracies to Authoritarian Regimes

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) just released its yearly Democracy Index in which it ranks and assigns a democracy score to every country based on five factors:

Electoral process & pluralism

Functioning of government

Political participation

Political culture

Civil liberties

In general, the news wasn’t good — Latin America’s overall score fell for the sixth straight year. According to the EIU, it was “the biggest downgrade recorded by any region since [launching] the Democracy Index.” Only about 1% of the region’s population lives in what it calls a “Full democracy,” thanks to our MVPs, Uruguay and Costa Rica. These two countries both ranked in the world’s top 20. First, let’s focus on the 1% and then continue delivering the bad news.

Not only was Uruguay ranked as the most democratic in the region, but it also saw one of the most significant improvements in score worldwide. The country scored 10/10 in “electoral process and pluralism” and 9.71 in “civil liberties.” Costa Rica had the highest “political participation,” scoring a 7.78.

As to the alarming trends in our region, there were multiple category downgrades:

Chile went from “full democracy” to “flawed democracy.”

Ecuador, Mexico, and Paraguay lost their status as “flawed democracies” and are now designated as “hybrid regimes.”

Haiti was downgraded from a “hybrid regime” to an “authoritarian regime.”

Check out the full report here.