In 2023, Spain remains a “full democracy” in the democratic quality index prepared annually by The Economist despite the persistent blockage in the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and the political polarization derived from the negotiation of the Amnesty law.
Regarding 2022, Spain loses one position but with the same score (8.07) and closes the group of full democracies, tied with France in 23rd place, a qualification that it lost in 2021 due to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. covid, something that affected other countries around it, and due to the blockade of the CGPJ and the polarization that still persist. It then fell, with a score of 7.94, to the group of defective democracies.
The report from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), an independent business unit at the communications group, defines full democracies as countries in which not only basic political freedoms and civil liberties are respected, but they also tend to be supported by a political culture conducive to the flourishing of democracy. The functioning of the government is satisfactory. The media is independent and diverse. There is an effective system of checks and balances. The judiciary is independent and judicial decisions are applied. There are only limited problems in the functioning of democracies.
The study is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism, government functioning, political participation, political culture and civil liberties. Based on their scores on a series of indicators, each country is classified as one of four regime types: full democracy (8 to 10), flawed democracy (6 to 8), hybrid regime (4 to 6), or regime authoritarian (from 0 to 4).
Spain gets an outstanding score in electoral processes and pluralism (9.58) and is close to it in civil liberties (8.53). Below 8 are items such as political participation (7.20) and the functioning of the government and political culture, both with 7.5.
The list is topped by Norway with a 9.81 and is followed by New Zealand and the rest of the Scandinavian countries. The United States is in the group of defective democracies with a 7.85, while Russia continues to lose positions and goes from 2.28 to 2.22 points in the zone of authoritarian regimes due to the invasion of Ukraine. A situation to which Ukraine itself is no stranger, which within the group of hybrid regimes is one of the countries that shows the worst behavior, losing 0.36 points to stand at 5.06 points. Afghanistan closes the list with 0.26 points.
The study, which does not mention Spain, points out that three years after the covid pandemic, which caused a decline in freedoms around the world, the results for 2023 point to “continued democratic unrest.” In this way, it details that only a minority of countries improved their score and the margin for improvement for the majority was small and often started from a low base. Meanwhile, 68 countries recorded a decline in their score, some of which was substantial. For this reason, The Economist draws a global panorama of “democratic stagnation and regression.”
The decline in the overall index score (5.25) was driven by declines in all regions of the world, except Western Europe, whose average score improved by the smallest possible margin (0.01 points). All other regions recorded a decline in their average score, with the largest regressions occurring in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East and North Africa.
