Updated 5.15pm with PN reaction - The October 2017 murder of blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia has driven down Malta’s score in the The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index for 2017 by 0.24 points, the largest drop of any country in Western Europe.

“Malta’s score has slipped following the unresolved murder in October 2017 of Daphne Caruana Galizia, an anti-corruption blogger, which has raised questions about the rule of law and the authorities’ willingness to investigate sensitive crimes,” the comprehensive report said.

Malta still ranks as a full democracy, in 17th place out of the 19 countries in this category. It had a score of 8.15, compared to leader Norway which had a score of 9.87.

The island’s score was calculated over several categories, with the lowest for political participation – 6.11 – and the highest – 9.17 – for electoral process and pluralism.

The drop is particularly significant as the score had been 8.39 for the three previous years, and has alternated between scores of 8.28 and 8.39 for over 10 years.

Malta’s ranking for media freedom was considerably lower with a score of 8, in 31st place, and categorised as ‘partly free’.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide for 165 independent states and two territories. This is the tenth edition of the Democracy Index, which began in 2006.

PN: Instead of best in Europe, Malta has worst ever ranking

The Nationalist Party in a statement said that while the government had promised that Malta would be the best in Europe, this was the worst ever ranking for the country.

This was a result of the attacks on the media by the Joseph Muscat government, which in terms of the index had reduced Malta to the same level of Botswana, the Dominican Republic and Namibia. 

The PN said it was concerned by the results of the index and said the government should face reality. 

Norway tops index

Norway once again tops the Democracy Index global ranking in 2017. The Nordics occupy the top three spots, with Iceland and Sweden taking second and third place.

The star performer in this year’s Democracy Index, in terms of movement up the rankings, is The Gambia, which was upgraded from an “authoritarian regime” to a “hybrid regime”. It rose rapidly up the rankings from a lowly 143rd to 113th place, after its score improved from 2.91 to 4.06, the biggest improvement of the year.

Highlights

• The average global score fell from 5.52 in 2016 to 5.48.

• 89 countries experienced a decline in their total score, and 27 and improvement

• 49.3% of the world’s population lives in a democracy of some sort, although only 4.5% reside in a “full democracy”

• 76 countries (45.5% ) can be considered to be democracies. The number of “full democracies” has remained at 19 in 2017, the same as in 2016, when the total declined from 20 in 2015 as the US fell into the “flawed democracy” category.

• 52 are “authoritarian” and 39 are classified as “hybrid regimes”

• 30 countries ( 11% of the world’s population) are classified as having “fully free” speech. Another 40 countries, representing 34.2% of the world’s population, are classified as “partly free”.