Democracy Index

The Democracy Index is an annual report produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit since 2006. In its latest report the top nation was Norway and the bottom ranked was North Korea. The index is compiled by examining the state of democracy in 167 countries and attempts to quantify this with an their Index of Democracy which focuses on five general categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. In addition, it lumps countries into one of four different categories: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes.

As of 2021 countries that were rated as flawed democracies and authoritarian regimes were considered the most common regime types with each being represented by 53 and 59 countries retrospectively and representing 39.3% and 35.3% of the world's population retrospectively. Countries that were rated as full democracies where considered the least common with only 21 countries that made up 6.4% of the the globe's population.