Report alleges that although democracies have been maintained in the pandemic, more than half of the countries have eroded them.
The Dominican Republic it has a defective democracy and presents a medium-low democratic performance, according to the publication “Political Risk in Latin America 2022” by the Center for International Studies.
Of 23 nations in the region, the country obtained 6.32 points, placing it in the range of 6-8 where the defective democracies are located. To be full it should get between 8 to 10 points. Uruguay is the nation with the highest score with 8.61 points and the only one with high performance.
Country profiles are not available in the study to view individual results.
The report states that, although during the pandemic the number of democracies has remained, more than half of the countries have experienced erosion in their elemental characteristics, leading to hybrid regimes becoming autocratic and dictatorships consolidating.
“A large number of governments took advantage of health restrictions to weaken the rule of law, freedoms and institutional controls,” the study indicates, after referring to the governance problems observed in Peru or Ecuador, or the attacks against electoral bodies in Brazil, El Salvador, Mexico and Peru, the corruption scandals in Chile, Colombia or Ecuador and the populist drifts in El Salvador and Brazil.
It highlights that a characteristic of this process of democratic deterioration is that the threats come from elected rulers who erode their institutions and freedoms from within.
