The state of Malta’s democracy has been downgraded to the ‘flawed’ category in The Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual index.
While Malta had been classified as having a so-called ‘full democracy’ since the index was first put together in 2006, the political turmoil the country experienced in 2019 saw the island’s score take a significant hit.
As a result, Malta slid into the ‘flawed democracy’ category alongside a list of countries that includes Hong Kong, Panama, the US, South Korea, Israel as well as 54 other countries. Apart from Malta, four other EU countries – Belgium, Cyprus, Italy and Greece – have also been classified as having flaws in their democracy.
Of the 167 countries covered by the index, Malta was the only one to move down from the ‘full democracy’ category into the ‘flawed democracy’ bracket.
The annual index issued by the publication’s Intelligence Unit provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide.
For the purpose of the study, the researchers considered ‘flawed democracies’ as those which have free and fair elections and, even if there are problems (such as infringements on media freedom), basic civil liberties are respected.
Poor functioning of government blamed in the study
In these countries, however, there are significant weaknesses in other aspects of democracy, including problems in governance, an underdeveloped political culture and low levels of political participation.
Overall, Malta was awarded a score of 7.95, the lowest since the index started being put together, placing the country in the 26th position globally.
Malta scored the lowest in the ‘political participation’ category (6.11) with both the scores for ‘functioning of government’ (7.5) and ‘political culture’ (8.11) being higher. The electoral process and pluralism were awarded the most marks of all categories reviewed (9.17). Civil liberties were given a score of 8.82.
Speaking to Times of Malta ahead of the index’s publication, Democracy Index editor Joan Hoey said one of the main reasons for the result was the “poor functioning of Malta’s government”, particularly weaknesses in the rule of law and an inadequate system of checks and balances.
“The murder in 2017 of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and the subsequent deeply flawed handling of the investigation by the government and Malta’s institutions have exposed fundamental deficiencies in the political and institutional environment in Malta,” she said.
“In addition, corruption appears to be embedded at a high level and several senior Maltese officials have been linked to cases of graft and exposed by the media,” Ms Hoey added.
Malta’s ‘golden passport’ scheme – the Individual Investor Programme (IIP) – attracted wealthy businessmen from across the world seeking Maltese, and thereby, EU citizenship and this had spawned corrupt ties among Malta’s business, finance and political communities, the editor said.
On the low score for political participation, Ms Hoey said Malta had historically scored poorly in this category because of what she said was a low level of engagement by citizens in politics, dwindling membership of political parties, poor representation of women in Parliament and a lack of encouragement on the part of the authorities to promote political participation in the country.
Reacting to the downgrade, a spokesman for the Foreign and European Affairs Ministry said the report was written before new Prime Minister Robert Abela “started addressing effectively the issues of good governance”.
“The Minister for Foreign and European Affairs will be communicating all the measures taken in Malta to ensure the rule of law,” the spokesman said.
Evarist Bartolo was handed the foreign affairs portfolio last week when Dr Abela appointed his new Cabinet. Mr Bartolo currently faces the difficult task of restoring Malta’s dented international reputation in the wake of Ms Caruana Galizia’s murder revelations.
Winners and losers
Although there were no big movements at the top and bottom of the 2019 index, a number of significant shifts in various countries’ scores were recorded.
Three countries – Chile, France and Portugal – moved from the ‘flawed democracy’ to the ‘full democracy’ category.
At the other end of the democracy spectrum, Iraq and Palestine moved from being classified as ‘hybrid regimes’ to ‘authoritarian regimes’ while Algeria moved from being an ‘authoritarian regime’ to a ‘hybrid regime’.
El Salvador and Thailand are out of the ‘hybrid regime’ category and into the ‘flawed democracy’ bracket, while Senegal moved in the opposite direction from a ‘flawed democracy’ to a ‘hybrid regime’.
There were a number of other notable improvements, particularly for Armenia, Bangladesh, El Salvador, Eswatini (Swaziland), Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia and Ukraine and there were regressions for Belarus, Benin, Bolivia, Cameroon, Comoros, Egypt, India, Guyana, Singapore, Mali and Zambia.
Measuring democracy
The Economist Intelligence Unit said its index was based on the view that democracy measures that reflected the state of political freedoms and civil liberties were not thick enough.
“They do not encompass sufficiently, or, in some cases, at all, the features that determine how substantive democracy is,” it said.
The unit said it used a combination of a dichotomous and a three-point scoring system for the 60 indicators. A dichotomous 1-0 scoring system (1 for a yes and 0 for a no answer), while ‘not without problems’ had several distinct advantages over more refined scoring scales (such as the often-used 1-5 or 1-7).
“For many indicators, the possibility of a 0.5 score is introduced, to capture ‘grey areas’, where a simple yes (1) or no (0) is problematic, with guidelines as to when that should be used. Consequently, for many indicators there is a three-point scoring system, which represents a compromise between simple dichotomous scoring and the use of finer scales.”
In addition to experts’ assessment, The Economist also makes use of public-opinion surveys, where these are available, to work out its scores.