Albania, a hybrid regime like Tunisia

The economist concludes that there has been a stalling situation, which means to decent progress, but not even regress of the democracy, based on the developments of the last year.

The economist analyses the democracy situation of 165 independent states and two territories, which covers more than half of the world’s population. The democracy index is based on five categories: the electoral process and pluralism; the civil freedoms; government functionality; the participation in politics and political culture.

The total identified four types of regimes: full democracies, flawed democracy, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes. The Economist ranks Albania among the hybrid regimes, in a classification that includes 37 states and 14% of the world’s population. In this list Albania is left behind by many countries from Latin America, Asia and Africa, ranked below Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Tunisia and above Nicaragua.  

Hong Kong, Malawi, Eastern Timor and Senegal have had improvements and have been classified this time higher than Albania, as flawed democracies.

But what are hybrid regimes? “Economist ” explains that the hybrid regimes have deep problems and electoral irregularities that often do not allow the elections to be free and fair. The government pressure on the opposition parties and their candidates could be very spread as a phenomenon. These serious problems are more dominating than in flawed democracies, such as the political culture, the functionality of the executive and the political participation. Corruption is more spread and the rule of law is considered weak. Such is the civil society. Typical of these regimes is the pressure on the media and the fact that the judiciary is not independent. Together with Albania are countries such as Venezuela, Mali, Egypt, Pakistan and Lybia, countries that have experienced wars or severe turmoil in the recent few years.

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