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Pakistan becomes the only Asian country to be downgraded to an "authoritarian regime", registering the greatest deterioration of any country in the region classified as "Australia and Asia", according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) Democracy Index 2023 report.
It has been reclassified from a "hybrid regime" to an "authoritarian regime", Geo News reported, citing the report.
The EIU Democracy Index provides a snapshot of the state of democracy in 165 independent states and two territories.
Out of the 28 countries in the region that are included in the index, 15 recorded a decline in their score, and only eight registered an improvement.
Notably, Pakistan's score on the EIU Democracy Index fell by 0.88 to 3.25, resulting in a fall of 11 places in the global ranking table, to 118th, according to Geo News.
Additionally, the report highlighted that along with the intervention in the electoral process and government dysfunction, the independence of the judiciary has been severely curtailed in Pakistan.
Since 2008, the country's score on the democracy index remained a little over 4, however, for the first time in 2023, its score fell to 3.25 during the coalition government primarily comprising of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Jamait Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F).
Moreover, Pakistan's 2-23 score on the democracy index is even worse than in 2006 (3.92) when military ruler Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf was in a ruling position, Geo News reported.
Calling it "disappointing", Pakistan Institue of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat) Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, said, "This is a very disappointing development as Pakistan has scored the lowest since 2017 and our category has also been downgraded from a hybrid regime' to an authoritarian regime."
He further urged all stakeholders to "undertake serious soul searching at this state of affairs".
Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said that it is unfortunate that after 15 consecutive years of formal civilian rule and some decentralisation reforms that strengthened Pakistan's democracy, the country has regressed to the point where it's being characterised as less democratic than it was during periods of formal military rule.
"And sadly, the trend lines don't suggest this pattern will change anytime soon," he added.
Madiha Afzal, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, noted that it's no surprise that Pakistan has been downgraded from a hybrid regime to an authoritarian one by EIU, given the space ceded to the establishment by the PDM and their growing influence during the caretaker setup that followed, Geo News reported.
"It should also be a signal that the world is watching Pakistan's democratic backsliding and its authoritarian turn," she added.
