Thailand’s EIU Democracy Index Ranking Drops to Authoritarian Regime

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BANGKOK – Thailand’s EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit) Democracy Index performance has steadily dropped in the past five years since 2012 having scored 6.55 points until last year when it scored just 4.92 points and was placed in the Hybrid regime group.

Thailand’s scores for the past five years are as follows: 6.55 in 2012, 6.25 in 2013, 5.39 in 2014, 5.09 in 2015 and 4.92 in 2016.

Among Asean Ten, nine were measured and Thailand last year ranked 5th after Indonesia’s 6.97, the Philippines’ 6.94, Malaysia’s 6.54 and Singapore’s 6.38.

Worldwide, Thailand was placed on 100th ranking out of 167 countries measured by EIU’s Democracy Index. The top ten last year were Norway, Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand, Denmark, Canada, Ireland, Switzerland, Finland and Australia.

EIU ‘s Democracy Index measures the state of democracy by rating electoral processes and pluralism, the state of civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture in more than 160 countries worldwide.

According to the 2016 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 index has placed countries in four groups in accordance with the state of democracy: full democracy, 8-10 scores; flawed democracy, 6-8 scores; hybrid democracy, 4-6 scores; and authoritarian regime, 0-4 scores.

Source: Thai PBS, Economist Intelligence Unit