The United States has joined an annual list of "backsliding" democracies for the first time, the International IDEA think-tank said on Monday, pointing to a "visible deterioration" it said began in 2019. International IDEA bases its assessments on 50 years of democratic indicators in around 160 countries, assigning them to three categories: democracies (including those that are "backsliding"), "hybrid" governments and authoritarian regimes. The number of backsliding democracies has doubled in the past decade, now accounting for a quarter of the world's population. In addition to "established democracies" such as the US, the list includes EU member states Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. Adding backsliding democracies to the hybrid and authoritarian states, "we are talking about 70 percent of the population in the world," Casas-Zamora said.

Source: Manila Times November 23, 2021 00:18 UTC