Russia suffers biggest global fall in the Democracy Index following its invasion of Ukraine

EIU’s 2022 Democracy Index sheds light on global democracy trends in the shadow of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This seismic event sent shockwaves around the world and revealed divisions between the developed democracies backing Ukraine and many developing countries that chose not to take sides.

The annual index, which provides a measurement of the state of global democracy as tracked by EIU’s analysts, reveals an overall score of 5.29, not much improved from the previous year despite the ending of pandemic-related restrictions that had badly dented the global score in 2020-21. Following its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s score showed the most dramatic drop of any country in the world, recording a fall of 0.96 points to 2.28.

According to EIU’s measure of democracy, less than half (45.3%) of the world’s population live in a democracy of some sort, and even fewer (8%) reside in a “full democracy”; however, the number of “full democracies” rose from 21 in 2021 to 24 in 2022, after three countries (Chile, France and Spain) were upgraded from “flawed democracies”. Substantially more than a third of the world’s population (36.9%) live under authoritarian rule, a large share of which are in China and Russia. Two countries, Papua New Guinea and Peru, were downgraded in the 2022 index, both from a “flawed democracy” classification to that of a “hybrid regime”.

Beyond Russia, other countries that fared badly were Burkina Faso in west Africa, where an Islamist insurgency has resulted in the state losing control of swathes of territory, the displacement of about 1.7m people and the deaths of thousands. Haiti appears to be in a state of internal dissolution, and registered a steep decline in its index score. There were setbacks for democracy in several other countries in Latin America, including El Salvador and Mexico. In the Middle East and North Africa, the worst-performing region in terms of its absolute score and its year-on-year score change, Tunisia, Iraq and Jordan all register sharp declines in their scores.

The good news is that the number of countries recording an improvement in their score (75) rose compared with 2021, when only 47 managed to do so. However, the index scores for the other 92 countries either stagnated (48) or declined (44) in 2022. This is a poor outcome given the scale of the upgrades to several indicators related to the restoration of individual freedoms after pandemic lockdowns and other measures were lifted in 2022. The results suggest that the rollback of these measures did not always mean a return to the status quo ante.

EIU’s Democracy Index 2022 report is available free of charge at: eiu.com/democracy-index