One would imagine that since the start of democracy’s third wave accelerated by the end of the Cold War democracy dominates globally but surprisingly more than half the world lives under non-democratic systems. Democracy Digest had this information. Here is an excerpt:

Less than half (45.7%) of the global population lives in a democracy – a pronounced decline from 2020 (49.4%), according to The Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Democracy Index.

Even fewer (6.4%) reside in a “full democracy”; this level is slightly down from 8.4% in 2020, after two countries (Chile and Spain) were downgraded to “flawed democracies”, the EIU reports. Substantially more than a third of the world’s population (37.1%) live under authoritarian rule, a large share of which are in China, according to EIU’s measure of democracy, which registers an overall score of 5.28, down from 5.37 in 2020 –  the biggest fall since 2010.

The annual survey, which rates the state of democracy across 167 countries on the basis of five measures—electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties— finds that more than a third of the world’s population live under authoritarian rule, The Economist adds. 

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