Taiwan has been ranked Asia’s No. 1 “full democracy,” jumping three places in the 2021 Democracy Index rankings from the previous year, a report released on Thursday by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) said.
Globally, Taiwan has climbed to the No. 8 position, from 11th in 2020, scoring 8.99 out of 10, the EIU report showed.
Regionally, Taiwan was ranked ahead of Japan and South Korea.
Photo: Reuters
“Asia and Australasia have five ‘full democracies,’ including three Asian ones (Japan, South Korea and Taiwan), alongside Australia and New Zealand,” the report said.
The EIU bases its findings on five factors: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture.
The factors are used to assess the state of democracy in 167 countries and regions worldwide.
Based on a range of indicators, each country is given an overall score out of a maximum of 10, and is classified as a “full democracy,” “flawed democracy,” “hybrid regime” or “authoritarian regime.”
The developed countries of Western Europe continued to dominate globally last year, with 12 of 21 ranked as “full democracies,” the EIU said.
Taiwan was the only Asian country in the top 10, while Norway topped the global rankings with a score of 9.75, followed by New Zealand (9.37), Finland (9.27), Sweden (9.26), Iceland (9.18), Denmark (9.09) and Ireland (9.0).
Australia and Switzerland were tied in ninth place with a score of 8.9, ahead of the Netherlands (8.88), Canada (8.87), Uruguay (8.85), Luxembourg (8.68) and Germany (8.67), which were ranked 11th to 15th.
The US was ranked 26th and classified as a “flawed democracy.”
The EIU said that the number of “full democracies” fell from 13 in 2020 to 12 last year, with Spain ranked 24th and slipping into the same rank as the US.
In the bottom positions were North Korea, Myanmar and Afghanistan, placing 165th to 167th.
The report mentioned the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on freedom around the world.
“The pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented withdrawal of civil liberties among developed democracies and authoritarian regimes alike, through the imposition of lockdowns and restrictions on traveling and, increasingly, the introduction of ‘green passes’ requiring proof of vaccination against COVID-19 for participation in public life,” it said.
The EIU’s first Democracy Index report was issued in 2006.
Civil society groups yesterday protested outside the Legislative Yuan, decrying Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) efforts to pass three major bills that they said would seriously harm Taiwan’s democracy, and called to oust KMT caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁). It was the second night of the three-day “Bluebird wintertime action” protests in Taipei, with organizers announcing that 8,000 people attended. Organized by Taiwan Citizen Front, the Economic Democracy Union (EDU) and a coalition of civil groups, about 6,000 people began a demonstration in front of KMT party headquarters in Taipei on Wednesday, organizers said. For the third day, the organizers asked people to assemble
POOR IMPLEMENTATION: Teachers welcomed the suspension, saying that the scheme disrupted school schedules, quality of learning and the milk market A policy to offer free milk to all school-age children nationwide is to be suspended next year due to multiple problems arising from implementation of the policy, the Executive Yuan announced yesterday. The policy was designed to increase the calcium intake of school-age children in Taiwan by drinking milk, as more than 80 percent drink less than 240ml per day. The recommended amount is 480ml. It was also implemented to help Taiwanese dairy farmers counter competition from fresh milk produced in New Zealand, which is to be imported to Taiwan tariff-free next year when the Agreement Between New Zealand and
A woman who allegedly spiked the food and drinks of an Australian man with rat poison, leaving him in intensive care, has been charged with attempted murder, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. The woman, identified by her surname Yang (楊), is accused of repeatedly poisoning Alex Shorey over the course of several months last year to prevent the Australian man from leaving Taiwan, prosecutors said in a statement. Shorey was evacuated back to Australia on May 3 last year after being admitted to intensive care in Taiwan. According to prosecutors, Yang put bromadiolone, a rodenticide that prevents blood from
China is likely to focus on its economy over the next four years and not set a timetable for attempting to annex Taiwan, a researcher at Beijing’s Tsinghua University wrote in an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine on Friday. In the article titled “Why China isn’t scared of Trump: US-Chinese tensions may rise, but his isolationism will help Beijing,” Chinese international studies researcher Yan Xuetong (閻學通) wrote that the US and China are unlikely to go to war over Taiwan in the next four years under US president-elect Donald Trump. While economic and military tensions between the US and China would
RSS