The Economist Intelligence Unit released Democracy Index 2018 on Tuesday in which Pakistan has been declared as a hybrid regime, ranking just above the authoritarian Myanmar.
Pakistan has fallen two places in the global ranking with an overall score of 4.63. According to the report, Pakistan’s global rank is 112 and regional rank is 21. A breakdown of this score reveals that Pakistan scored 6.08 in the electoral process and pluralism, 5.36 in the functioning of the government, 2.22 in political participation, 2.50 in political culture and 4.71 in civil liberties.
In the index, China rose nine places in the global ranking, although it remains classified as an authoritarian regime and its climb in the index mainly reflects the worsening scores of other countries in the index, particularly in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Little change was felt in Asia’s two largest democracies: India (ranked 41st) and Indonesia (65th) as both are readying themselves for elections in 2019.
“After a fiercely contested election, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), lost power to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by Imran Khan. The polls took a sour turn when the defeated parties alleged widespread election rigging. Although electoral malpractice has been a long-running feature of voting in Pakistan, the scale of abuses on this occasion appears to have been substantially larger than during the last election in 2013. Pakistan’s democracy is not a sturdy one. In fact, in the 2018 Democracy Index, its position declines to 112th from 110th previously. Nevertheless, an argument can be made that, flawed as the polls were, the Pakistani electorate still managed to push out the incumbent government for high levels of corruption and lack of transparency. Nawaz Sharif, the honorary leader of the PML-N, was disqualified as prime minister by a Supreme Court (SC) ruling in July 2017, based on a preliminary investigation into corruption charges stemming from a set of leaked financial documents known as the Panama Papers,” the report stated.
Norway has once again topped the index with an overall score of 9.87 and has been classified as a full democracy.
According to the report, only 20 countries (4.5 per cent of the world’s population) are classified as full democracies while 55 countries (43.2 per cent of the world’s population) are classified as flawed democracies, 39 countries (16.7 per cent of the world’s population) are classified as hybrid regimes and 53 countries (35.6 per cent of the world’s population) are classified as authoritarian regimes.
