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The highest declines, the finding number two, the highest declines are
linked to aspects related to civic space. The aspect of civil liberties has seen
the most countries declining in the past five years. In 2017 civil liberties
declined in 34 countries compared to 10 where they advanced. And, we cover
here, freedom of expression, freedom of association and assembly, civil society
participation, and media integrity. Interestingly however, when it comes to
absence of corruption, since 2006, more countries have made significant gains
in reducing corruption, and at the same time, there’s an increasing number of
countries where corruption is gaining ground. So, there is an increasing
polarization there, which would deserve further study and analysis.
Finding number three is the regions with concentration of so called
established or high performing democracy in North America, Europe, and Latin
America have experienced democratic declines in the last five years. This
decline in establish democracy has been gradual. We call it modern democratic
backsliding, which is characterized by democratically elected parties or leaders
using legal means to weaken democracy from within. This decline is not
necessarily characterized by deterioration on conducted elections, but more
often by worsening situation with regard to respect for civil liberties, restriction
on civil society or the media.
Fourthly, while this all, of course, is a cause for concern, it is important to
note that the vast majority of countries around 130 have seen no significant
changes in their democratic performance, in either direction since 2012. There
are, however, stark regional variations and some regions continue to lag
significantly behind others.
So, how is Thailand measuring over time and what does our data tell us?
I will start with some gains and advances, and pinpoint to what we see as
remaining challenges to democratization in Thailand, based on the indication
provided by the data. And I’d like to emphasize here that I’m presenting here
is some descriptive data, and more in depth and qualitative analysis of regional
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contexts and conjugates will be presented in a forthcoming report, and is
subject to choose discussions.
Basic welfare, these indicators, measure basic welfare indicators, infant
mortality, life expectancy, nutrition, schooling; and this sub-component is one of
the dimensions where International IDEA’s definition of democracy is broader
than others. We usually do not include basic welfare as a dimension of
democracy, whereas we think democracy needs to deliver also in basic welfare.
As we can see, Thailand has had continuous growth in basic welfare since
1975. It scores above not only South East Asia sub-region, but above Asia and
the Pacific region and even the world average.
