In its 2023 Democracy Report, entitled “Defiance in the Face of Autocratization”, the V-Dem Institute criticizes Mauritius. One of its conclusions is that Mauritius, along with Armenia and Greece, are democracies in steep decline.
Another conclusion of the V-Dem Institute is that while El Salvador and Tunisia are no longer democracies, “democracy seems to be hanging by a thread in Mauritius”.
In its report, the authors state that the Government censorship of the media, for instance, worsened the most in Afghanistan, El Salvador, Hong Kong, Mauritius, and Poland, over the past ten years. The report adds: “Mauritius – once hailed as the only liberal democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa – recently introduced several regulations that restrict the work of broadcasting companies and journalists.”
It also stated that three countries, namely El Salvador, Mauritius, and Tunisia, appear as top autocracies in both panels. This means that the process of moving away from democracy started long ago but continues to a significant degree also into 2022.
V-Dem provides a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that reflects the complexity of the concept of democracy as a system of rule that goes beyond the simple presence of elections. We distinguish between five high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian, and collect data to measure these principles. The institute is funded by several government organizations, World Bank and several research institutions.
This report will be vastly commented in the next days.
