Greece is among the “flawed democracies”, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) white paper released annually since 2006. Greece had a score of 7.29 out of 10, ranking it 39th below Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Cyprus out of the 167 states in the paper.

The top five ‘full democracies’ are Norway (9.87), Iceland (9.58), Sweden (9.39), New Zealand (9.26) and Finland (9.25).

The last five places (163-167) of the “authoritarian dictatorships” are Chad, Syria, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and (last) North Korea.

The “Democracy Index” provides a general overview of the situation of Democracies in 167 independent states. It measures countries’ performances in five areas: electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties.

The report found that democracy has been eroded around the world in the past year. The global score of 5.44 out of ten is the lowest recorded since the index began in 2006. Just 22 countries, home to 430m people, were deemed “full democracies” by the EIU. More than a third of the world’s population, meanwhile, still live under authoritarian rule.

Driven by sharp regressions in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, four out of the five categories that make up the global average score have deteriorated. Although there were some dramatic downturns in the scores of certain countries, others have bucked the overall trend and registered impressive improvements.