A leading researcher at the Swedish V-Dem Institute told Belgrade daily Danas that Serbia’s ranking on the Liberal Democracy Index which is used to assess the state of democracy in individual countries.

“In 2009, the index value was 0.53 and last year it dropped to 0.25,” Institute Deputy Director Anna Lührmann told the daily. She said that Serbia is now among the countries in which autocracy has strengthened significantly. The V-Dem Institute described Serbia as an electoral autocracy, ranking 139th of 179 countries which is the worst rating in the Western Balkans.  

Lührmann said that Serbia’s bad standing is mainly due to media censorship and the government’s attempts to influence the media as well as the reduced space for civil society and academic institutions. She also cited concern over the quality of the election system.

The V-Dem Democracy Report 2020 said that “while censorship has been a long-standing problem in Serbia, the other indicators concerning the media, civil society and civil liberties also worsened before electoral integrity suffered and this nation slipped back to authoritarianism in 2015”.  

Serbia is also listed among the countries “that have autocratized the most over the last 10 years” with Hungary, Turkey, Poland, Brazil and India.