“Armenia is still among the states with semi-authoritarian government system,” representatives of Freedom House mentioned in their report published today, “Azatutyun” Radio informs.
This document: “States in Transition” includes information on the latest year’s developments in 29 countries of Eastern Europe, Balkans and Post Soviet States.
Special attention was paid to the activities of electoral systems, the state of free media and civil society, as well as activities aimed at struggle against corruption.
The experts evaluated the states by a 7 grade scale, where 1 indicates complete democracy and 7 indicates that the state has an authoritarian government.
According to the report the level of democracy in Armenia is 5.36, which is better than the last years 5.43.
With this rating Armenia is far behind Georgia and is ahead of Azerbaijan, all five Central Asian republics, as well as Russia, Belarus, which Freedom House considers authoritarian.
The authors of the report have noted improvements in the area of struggle against corruption in Armenia. It says that introduction of electronic government system may be considered as a positive step both in Armenia and in Georgia, which is directed to struggle against corruption in lower levels.
With regard to other spheres nearly all indicators are on the same level as compared with the last year. For example according to compliance with indicators of democracy state in the families Armenia has 5.75, which is even worse than in Kyrgyzstan, which is among the authoritarian countries, and cannot be compared with Georgia or even with Kosovo, which is recognized by the International Community
With regard to independent media, Armenia is on the same level with Tajikistan.
The heist indicator is in the sphere of development of the civil society, where the progress in Armenia may be compared with that in Georgia and a number of Balkan countries.