Democracy Report 2022: Important Points
The V-Dem Institute at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg has come out with their annual democracy report. The study is titled ‘Democracy Report 2022: Autocratisation Changing Nature?’.
- The report classifies countries into four regime types based on their score in the Liberal Democratic Index (LDI): Liberal Democracy, Electoral Democracy, Electoral Autocracy, and Closed Autocracy.
- It classifies India as an electoral autocracy ranking it 93rd on the LDI, out of 179 countries.
- The level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2021 is down to 1989 levels, with the democratic gains of the post-Cold War period eroding rapidly in the last few years.
- More than twice as many countries (32) are undergoing autocratisation as are witnessing democratisation (15).
- Noting that India is one of the top ten ‘autocratisers’ in the world, the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) report classifies India as an autocracy (‘electoral autocracy’) rather than a democracy, ranking it 93rd on the liberal democracy index, out of 179 countries.
- One of the biggest drivers of autocratisation is “toxic polarisation”, a dominant trend in 40 countries, as opposed to 5 countries that showed rising polarisation in 2011.
