Bangladesh improves in democracy index, but still a 'hybrid regime'

Bangladesh has gone eight notches higher than the previous year in the Democracy Index-2019, published by the intelligence unit of the London-based Economist (EIU) on Wednesday.

According to EIU, Bangladesh ranked 80th out of 167 countries. Bangladesh democracy secured overall 5.88 points in a scale of 10.

In 2017, the country ranked 92nd out 165 countries while in 2016 it was 84th.

Despite the improvement, Bangladesh, however, has still been ranked as a 'hybrid regime'. Hybrid regime is one where free and fair elections often face hurdles and the government puts pressure on the opposition parties and their candidates in the elections.

Other characteristics of hybrid regime are -- an increasing emphasis on elite/expert governance rather than popular participatory democracy, a growing influence of unelected, unaccountable institutions and expert bodies, the removal of substantive issues of national importance from the political arena to be decided by politicians, experts or supranational bodies behind closed doors, a widening gap between political elites and parties on the one hand and national electorates on the other, a decline in civil liberties, including media freedom and freedom of speech, the EIU report said.

Among the South Asian countries, India (51st) is ahead of Bangladesh while Bhutan (91st), Nepal (92nd), Pakistan (108th) and Myanmar (122nd) are behind Bangladesh in Democracy Index-2019.

Norway has secured the top position with a score of 9.87 while Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand, Finland, Ireland, Denmark, Canada, Australia and Switzerland are in the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th place respectively.

North Korea ranked the least democratic country in the EIU report. Four other least democratic countries are -- Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Syria and Chad.

The scales were divided into four categories: the countries that scored eight or more are identified as full democracies, those which scored between six and less than eight are flawed democracies, those scored less than six and more than four are hybrid regimes and scored below four are authoritarian regimes.