Albania has risen four places in The Economist 2022 Democracy Index, making it one of the best-performing countries of the year, resulting in an upgrade from hybrid regime to flawed democracy.

The scoring system looks at performance in several key areas including, electoral process and pluralism, government functioning, political participation, political culture and civil liberties.

‘“A total of 16 countries in Eastern Europe improve their score in the Democracy Index in 2022, with Montenegro and Albania registering the biggest improvements,” the report noted, adding that “six countries suffer a deterioration in their score, with Russia facing the largest decline” with their being “no full democracies in the region.”

Based on its scores on a range of indicators within these categories, each country is then classified as one of four regime types: “full democracy”, “flawed democracy”, “hybrid regime” or “authoritarian regime.”

The upgrade of status means that elections are free and there are civil rights, but there are problems such as freedom of the media, crisis, or suppression of the opposition. Albania now ranks at number 64, a significant rise from 68th in 2021 and 71st in 2020.

Marked out of a possible 10 points, Albania scored 7.35 for civil liberties, 7.0 for electoral process and pluralism, 6.43 for the functioning of government, 6.25 for political culture, and just 5.00 for political participation.

It ranked above Serbia, Moldova and North Macedonia, but below North Macedonia and Montenegro. The top performers on the index were Norway, New Zealand, Iceland, Sweden and Finland. The bottom included Afghanistan, Myanmar, North Korea and the Central African Republic.

(Alice Taylor | Exit.al)