Fiji classified as a weak democracy in report as the country is only performing at a mid-range level on four subattributes – International IDEA

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) says Fiji is classified as a weak democracy in the Global State of Democracy Report because the country is only performing at a mid-range level on four subattributes, and is low performing on Participatory Engagement, principally due to low scores on Local Democracy and Direct Democracy.

While responding to questions by Legend FM News on how they arrived at the rating, they say they are not sure where the 0.6 rating came from as International IDEA does not provide a single score for countries or produce a country ranking.

It also says that the scores are also low on Social Rights and Equality for Fiji.

However Fiji is amongst the countries which has, as per the overall scores, advanced toward democracy between 2015 to 2020.

International IDEA says they aggregate scores for different attributes and subattributes which are part of their definition of democracy.

It says Fiji scores 0.46 in Representative Government, 0.58 in Fundamental Rights, 0.50 in Checks on Government and 0.53 in Impartial Administration. Each attribute has different performance levels. If a country’s score exceeds 0.7, its performance is labeled ‘high’.

Scores below 0.4 correspond to ‘low’ performance.

Scores between 0.4 and 0.7 classify a country’s performance as ‘mid-range’.

International IDEA says weak democracies are those with at least one low performing attribute.

When asked by Legend FM News on how the information was gathered, International IDEA says they aggregate 116 indicators from 13 data sources, including expert surveys and observational data.

They say they estimate the values of each of their 16 subattributes of democracy using the best available data, and further provide upper and lower bounds for those estimates.