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Bangladesh slips two notches down democracy ladder to 75th rank and is classified by the Economist as a "hybrid regime" among countries in the world.
The Economist Intelligence Unit published the Democracy Index 2023 where Bangladesh sees its score at a 5-year low.
The intelligence unit of the London-based magazine ranked a total of 165 independent states and two territories to get to the conclusion on their status in practice of democracy.
Scored on a 0-10 scale, the Democracy Index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties.
Based on its scores on a range of indicators within these categories, each country is classified as one of four types of regimes: "full democracy", "flawed democracy", "hybrid regime" or "authoritarian regime".
Bangladesh bagged an overall score of 5.87 out of 10 and classified as a "hybrid regime".
Most of the regression occurred among the non-democracies classified as "hybrid regimes" and "authoritarian regimes".
According to the EIU, countries classified as "hybrid regimes" means countries where elections have substantial irregularities that often prevent them from being both free and fair and government pressure on opposition parties and candidates may be common.
Bangladesh ranked third in South Asia, taking India as the first and Afghanistan at the bottom in the region.
According to the report, only 7.8 per cent reside in a "full democracy" and more than one-third of the world's population live under authoritarian rule (39.4 per cent).
"The world's democracies seem powerless to prevent wars from breaking out around the globe and less adept at managing conflict at home," the report reads.
The Nordic countries - Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Finland and Denmark--were placed at the top in rankings. The global average index score fell to 5.23. The index began in 2006.