Pandemic helped roll back democratic freedoms globally in 2021: EIU study

A year after the storming of the US Capitol by Donald Trump supporters, 58 percent of Americans believe the country's democracy is in danger of collapse, according to a Quinnipiac poll Olivier DOULIERY AFP/File

Democratic standards across the world fell again in 2021 against a backdrop of the Covid health crisis and growing support for authoritarianism, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's annual report published this week. Well under half of the world's population now lives in a democracy with France topping the list of Europe's "flawed democracies".

The EIU's 2021 index, called The China Challenge, provides a measurement of the state of global democracy.