Democracy in the South Caucasus

Social Science in the Caucasus, the blog of the Caucasus Resource Research Centers based in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, has an interesting post on the 2007 Democracy Index from The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The CRRC blog says that what makes this index different from that of Freedom House and others is that public opinion surveys are included and contribute to the final report.

In the South Caucasus, Georgia and Armenia are classified as hybrid regimes, ranked at positions 104 and 110, respectively, out of the total 167 entities surveyed. Azerbaijan is categorized as an authoritarian regime and placed at 129, just after Belarus. Russia actually does better than any country in the Caucasus, being at 102.

To get a better look, let’s disaggregate: with “functioning of government”, Azerbaijan does very badly at 0.79, Georgia is also poor with 1.79 (implying that territorrial integrity factors here), Russia and Armenia are doing much better at 3.21.

Georgia by far had the highest ranking in regards to a fair and free electoral processes at 7.92, as compared to Armenia’s 4.33 and Azerbaijan’s 3.08. (Armenia was on the negative watch list prior to the parliamentary elections this May for fear of flawed elections and likely there will be disagreements on how to evaluate the recent elections.)

Georgia scores 6.74 on civil liberties, Armenia has 6.18, Russia and Azerbaijan rate at 5.59.

Incidentally, I agree with CRRC’s doubts about levels of political participation, and also with their comment on Georgia’s breakaway regions drastically affecting their governance rating, but anyway.

Somewhat implausibly, political participation is rated at similar levels: Azerbaijan and Georgia with 3.33, Armenia at 3.89 (Russia is at 5.56). Surely, that is not plausible. According to our 2007 data, interest in politics (which surely is a reasonable proxy) certainly is not that homogenous across the three countries.

The full post with a link to the source EIU 2007 Democracy Index is here.