Bangladesh moves two notches up in democracy index
Bangladesh has advanced by two notches in the Democracy Index-2016 prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) of the British weekly magazine the Economist.
According to the index, released Thursday, the country ranked 84th among 167 countries, with scoring 5.73 points on the scale of 10. In 2015 the position was 86 while overall score was similar to 2016.
The Index is based on five categories - electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture.
According to the Index almost one-half of the world’s countries can be considered to be democracies of some sort, but the number of “full democracies” has declined from 20 in 2015 to 19 in 2016.
The US has been downgraded from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” because of a further erosion of trust in government and elected officials there.
The “democratic recession” worsened in 2016, when no region experienced an improvement in its average score and almost twice as many countries (72) recorded a decline in their total score as recorded an improvement (38). Eastern Europe experienced the most severe regression.
The Index, Revenge of the “deplorables”, examines the deep roots of today’s crisis of democracy in the developed world, and looks at how democracy fared in every region. The Index put Norway at the top position with 9.93 points while North Korea falls on the bottom with 1.08 points, according to the index, which also showed a “democratic recession” across the globe.
Earlier on Wednesday, Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of the Transparency International also showed that Bangladesh made progress in fighting against corruption in 2016.
“On a scale of 100, Bangladesh has scored 26 among 176 countries, an increase by one point compared to 25 of CPI 2015,” said the report.
Counting from below, the Bangladesh’s ranking has also moved up two steps from 13 in 2015 to 15 when the country been placed at 145th position from the top compared to 139th position in 2015.
Source: BSS
