Report: Hungarian democracy in shambles

Hungarian democracy is in shambles according to a new report made by the international IDEA organisation. The report they give out every year summarises the democratic standing of 173 countries of the world.

The global assessment of the democracies of the world summarises each years’ standing and developments. The report uses seventeen different metrics to help rank the democracies, writes Telex. The metrics include aspects such as the credibility of elections and equal access to legal institutions.

Democracy is in a worldwide recession

Until last year, the organisation published a master-list of democracies with all of the information. This year, they changed the structure and instead of one huge list, they published four smaller ones with different key aspects. These four smaller categories are representation, rights, rule of law and participation.

Rule of law and press freedom turned out to be the most common categories that declined.
Surprisingly enough, the Central European region showed an unexpected improvement in the rule of law department. This is interesting, because two of the most prominent states of this region – Hungary and Poland – notoriously get critiqued for rule of law concerns. Read more about democratic dilemmas HERE.

Hungary sliding down

Despite the improving Central European tendencies, Hungary is literally the last one on the list among the Member States. Hungary is the 64th on the rule of law list, six places lower than last year. The only category where Hungary isn’t the last one among Member States is the rights aspect. The Hungarian legal system is slowly deteriorating and not showing signs of getting any better, so we shouldn’t be very optimistic about this either. When compared to 2017, in 2022, Hungary dropped 18 places. Read more about Hungarian stance on democracy HERE.

On the bright side

However, the organisation observed improvement in 8 countries. For example, Romania stepped up a place making it only the third worst country in the European Union. Bulgaria moved up seven places, making it the 48th on the list.

None of them can touch Denmark, which is on the top in everything, except representation. Here, although there’s an improving tendency, the Swedes beat them to the first place.