The ninth edition, and the latest Democracy Index Report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has scored Ghana -54 out of 167 countries surveyed in the league of democratic states on the globe.
Per the report, Ghana has been graded a “flawed democracy” paired in the same category as the United States of America, which according to the report, was a standard-bearer in democratic practices.
Code-named the “Revenge of the Deplorables”,the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide for 165 independent states and two territories.
This covers almost the entire population of the world and the vast majority of the world’s states (microstates are excluded).
The Democracy Index is based on five categories including electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. Based on their scores on a range of indicators within these categories, each country is then itself classified as one of four types of regime: “full democracy”; “flawed democracy”; “hybrid regime”; and “authoritarian regime”.
Norway leads in a pack of 34 “ full democracies” in the world.
The US, the report says, has regressed as popular confidence in the functioning of public institutions has declined.
The score for the US fell to 7.98 from 8.05 in 2015, causing the world’s leading economic superpower to slip below the 8.00 threshold for a “full democracy”.
On Ghana and Africa, the report said even though “Political participation and political culture have improved over the past five years (albeit with a few notable exceptions), it has been offset by deteriorating scores for civil liberties and the functioning of government. Moreover, while elections have become commonplace across much of the region, the regional score for electoral processes has remained persistently low, reflecting a lack of genuine pluralism in most countries”.
Meanwhile, with electoral process and pluralism, Ghana was graded 8.33, while scoring 5.71 in government functioning. On political participation and political Culture, the country had 6.11 and 6.25 respectively.
