Democracies under pressure: More and more countries are slipping into authoritarian systems of government, democracies are on the defensive, according to the Bertelsmann Stiftung's (BTI) new Transformation Index. Today, 56 per cent of the 137 countries surveyed are ruled autocratically.
77 countries in the study are ruled autocratically, almost two thirds of which are considered hard autocracies. This means that fundamental rights are completely disregarded, as the authors of the Bertelsmann study conclude. A record high since the survey began in 2006.
