According to a recent study, democracy is on the decline worldwide.
As the British “Economist” group determined in its annual “Democracy Index”, in 2021 only 45.7 percent of the world’s population lived in some form of democracy.
That was significantly less than in 2020 with 49.4 percent.
Only 6.4 percent lived in a "full democracy", a slight decrease compared to the previous year (6.8 percent).
Well over a third of the people live in a dictatorship: 37.1 percent means a slight increase compared to 2020. The proportion of authoritarian states has risen steadily in recent years.
Germany in 15th place among democracies
Norway remains the leader.
The study gave the Scandinavian country top marks in three of the five categories.
Behind them, New Zealand climbed from fourth to second place, followed by the rest of the Nordic countries, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Denmark.
With the same number of points as in the previous year, Germany is in 15th place and is still in the highest category.
The authors criticized two larger countries in Europe.
They downgraded Spain to a “poor democracy” because of a weaker assessment of the independence of the judiciary due to political disputes over the appointment of judges.
The United Kingdom, on the other hand, remains a “full democracy”.
However, it still slipped down the rankings - several scandals had undermined trust in the government, it said.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticized for weeks because of the "Partygate" affair.
Focus on China
China in particular is playing an inglorious role, found the report “The China Challenge” by the EIU, the analytical research unit of the Economist group.
“China has not become more democratic while becoming richer.
On the contrary, the country has become less free," the statement said.
Human rights activists complain about increasing surveillance and repression against government critics, dissidents and minorities such as the Muslim Uyghurs.