The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute, an independent research institute funded by a number of government organizations, World Bank and several research institutions, recently issued the Democracy Report 2022 which attempts to gauge democracy levels across countries. In details, the report is based on version 12 of the V-Dem dataset, which relies on assessments, by some 3,700 experts from over 180 countries to generate some 30 million data points. Accordingly, the report ranks countries according to their scores on the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI), which is based on the dataset, in addition to classifying countries within four regime types, namely Liberal Democracy (LD), Electoral Democracy (ED), Electoral Autocracy (EA) and Closed Autocracy (CA). The report noted that democracy levels have continued their downturn, reaching levels recorded during the year 1989, which signifies that the democracy gains that have been recorded during the last 30 years have been eroded. In figures, the report uncovered that while the number of countries enjoying Liberal Democracies peaked at 42 during the year 2012, the number is now down to 34, its lowest level in more than 25 years, representing just 13% of the world population. In tandem, the number of countries classified under Closed Autocracies has increased from 25 to 30, i.e. 26% of the world population, while Electoral Autocracy remains the most popular regime, harboring 44% of the world’s population. The report also unveiled that 35 countries, a record number, experienced sizeable deteriorations in freedoms of expression during the year 2021, in comparison with just 5 countries a decade ago.

As far as results are concerned, Nordic countries occupied the top three positions, with Sweden topping the list with a score of 0.88 and a regime type of LD, followed by Denmark (0.88, “LD-”) and Norway            (0.86, “LD-”). As far as Arab countries are concerned, Tunisia came in first (ranking 74^th globally) with a score of 0.46 in the LDI and a regime type of “EA+”, followed by Lebanon (score of 0.28, 103^rd international rank, regime type “EA+”) and Kuwait (score of 0.27, 106^th international rank, regime type “CA+”). This implies that Lebanon is considered an Electoral Autocracy by the Democracy Report 2022, with the + sign indicating that when taking uncertainty into account, the country could belong to a higher category. However, the V-Dem report also unveiled that since the year 2011, Lebanon has suffered a downward movement in its regime type from a higher level.