Malta ranks 53rd in 2020 Democracy Report

Varieties of Democracy (V-DEM) is a team of over 50 social scientists on six continents. It works with more than 3,000 country experts and a truly global International Advisory Board. Its headquarters is based at the V-Dem Institute, the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. 

The following are the main findings of its 2020 Democracy Report ‘Autocrization Surges – Resistance Grows’: 

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   - Autocratization – the decline of democratic traits – accelerates in the world: for the first time since 2001, autocracies are in the majority: 92 countries – home to 54% of the global population. Almost 35% of the world’s population live in autocratizing nations – 2.6 billion people.

·    -  EU has its first non-democracy as a member: Hungary is now classed as an electoral authoritarian regime.

·     -  Major G20 nations and all regions of the world are part of the “third wave of autocratization”: autocratization is affecting Brazil, India, the United States of America, and Turkey, which are major economies with sizeable populations, exercising substantial global military, economic, and political influence. Latin America is back to a level last recorded in the early 1990s while Eastern Europe and Central Asia are at post-Soviet Union lows. India is on the verge of losing its status as a democracy due to the severely shrinking of space for the media, civil society, and the opposition under Prime Minister Modi’s government.

·      - Pro-democracy resistance grows from 27% in 2009 to 44% in 2019 amidst the autocratization surge. During 2019, citizens in 29 democracies mobilized against autocratization, such as in Bolivia, Poland, and Malawi. Citizens staged mass protests in 34 autocracies, among them Algeria, Hong Kong, and Sudan. 

Malta:

Malta is ranked 53^rd overall out of 179 countries, within the top 20-30%. It falls under the 2^nd category – ‘Electoral Democracy’, rather than 1^st category ‘Liberal Democracy’. The lowest ranked countries are found within the ‘Electoral Autocracy’ and ‘Closed Autoracy’ categories.

Malta ranks 44^th in Electoral Democracy index, 81^st in Liberal Component Index, 54^th in Egalitarian Component Index, 12^th in Participatory Component Index and 55^th in Deliberative Component Index.

(Compared to 2009, countries with overlapping confidence intervals, including Malta, are statistically indistinguishable, even if 2019 score is lower).

The full report can be read here.