Norway has claimed first place in the 2017 Democracy Index, closely followed by Iceland, Sweden and New Zealand. This stems from a global analysis of the levels of active democracy carried out by the US-based economic news site The Economist, measuring each country against 60 different indicators. Slovakia, the United States, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary were listed as having "flawed democracies," with the least democratic countries being Syria and North Korea.
Norway has retained its place at the top of the ranking since 2010, with Western Europe accounting for 14 of the world’s 19 “full democracies” which comprise the index’s top tier.
More than half the countries in the latest democratic health index saw their scores decline, including Slovakia, though it managed to hold on to 44th place, assigned in the 2016 index. Among the list of countries declared as having authoritarian regimes are Russia (135th place), China (139th place), Syria (166th place) and lastly North Korea (167th place).
According to The Economist, the index, which comprises 60 indicators across five broad categories—electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties—concludes that less than 5% of the world’s population currently lives in a “full democracy”.
The 2017 Democracy Index:
01 Norway
02 Iceland
03 Sweden
04 New Zealand
05 Denmark
06 Ireland
06 Canada
08 Australia
09 Finland
09 Switzerland
...
44. Slovakia
...
166. Syria
167. North Korea
