Epress.am News from Armenia
There was no change in Armenia in terms of democracy between 2010 and 2011, according to a recent report published by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
The report, The Democracy Index 2011, published this month, provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide for 165 independent states and two territories — “this covers almost the entire population of the world and the vast majority of the world’s independent states (micro states are excluded),” reads the report.
Countries are placed within one of four types of regimes: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes.
Armenia, ranked at 111th with an overall score of 4.09, is once again considered a “hybrid regime”. According to the EIU’s report, hybrid regimes are those countries where: elections have substantial irregularities that often prevent them from being both free and fair. Government pressure on opposition parties and candidates may be common. Serious weaknesses are more prevalent than in flawed democracies — in political culture, functioning of government and political participation. Corruption tends to be widespread and the rule of law is weak. Civil society is weak. Typically there is harassment of and pressure on journalists, and the judiciary is not independent.
The overall Democracy Index was based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. Out of these categories, Armenia ranked highest in civil liberties (5.88) and lowest in functioning of government (3.21) and political culture (3.13).
Unlike in Armenia, the state of democracy worsened for several Commonwealth of Independent States, including Russia and Azerbaijan. Russia, which last year was also in the “hybrid regimes” category (with a rank of 107 and a score of 4.26), this year ranked 117 (with a score of 3.92), finding itself in the “authoritarian regimes” category.
Though it had the same score as last year, Azerbaijan, also among the list of authoritarian regimes, dropped in ranking from 135 to 140. It was also named among the 40 countries with a deterioration in scores for media freedom since 2008.