Bangladesh has ranked the lowest position of the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) Democracy Index-2017 in a decade.
The EIU said Bangladesh's score fell to its lowest in line with a global decline in pluralism and civil liberties.
Bangladesh has got 92nd position among 165 countries with an overall score of 5.43 out of 10 last year.
In 2016, the country ranked 84th among 167 countries with a score of 5.73 on the 2016 index.
The report categorised Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey and Iraq along with Bangladesh in 'hybrid regime' having score of less than 6.
India holds the 42nd spot on the index
The EIU report categorised the countries with scores above 8 out of 10 as "full" democracies.
The report said less than 5 per cent of the world's population lives in a "full democracy."
Norway once again tops the Democracy Index global ranking in 2017.
The Nordics occupy the top three spots, with Iceland and Sweden taking second and third place.
Around one-third of the world’s population lives under authoritarian rule, with a large share being in China, having score of less than 4 out of 10.
The US was downgraded from a "full democracy" to a "flawed democracy" in the same study last year have score of less than 8.
In the 2017 Democracy Index, not a single region recorded an improvement in its average score compared with 2016.
Asia and Australia was the worst-performing region in 2017.
According to bdnews24, the average regional score for North America (Canada and the US) remained the same.
All the other six regions experienced a regression, as signified by a decline in their regional average score.
This is the tenth edition of the Democracy Index, which began in 2006. It records how global democracy fared in 2017.
The index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture.
The EIU is the research and analysis division of The Economist Group, the sister company of The Economist newspaper.
