DHAKA, Nov 25: Bangladesh ranks 75th among 165 democracies of the world, while the country is grouped in the category of flawed democracy, says a global survey report of the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The EIU report released on Friday also put Bangladesh on the ‘negative list’ with a caution that an unclear or disputed election result, to be overseen by the caretaker government, could trigger a political crisis and rollback of democracy.Its democracy index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of the government, political participation, and political culture.

Bangladesh’s overall score was 6.11, out of maximum of 10 band scores.

“The condition of having free and fair competitive elections and satisfying related aspects of political freedom is clearly the basic requirement of all definitions,” the report noted.

According to the ranking, although almost half of the world’s countries could be considered to be democracies, the number of ‘full democracies’ was relatively low (only 28). Almost twice as many (54) were rated as ‘flawed democracies’. Of the remaining 85 states, 55 were authoritarian and 30 considered ‘hybrid regimes’.

According to the EIU rankings, the top 10 democracies were Sweden, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Australia, Canada and Switzerland. In the ranking, the US managed to come in at 17 with the UK following up at 23.