Joining the likes of Iraq, Haiti and Singapore, Cambodia was categorised as a “hybrid regime” and ranked 101st out of 167 countries worldwide, according to the latest “democracy index” released by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The index – issued earlier this month by the same group responsible for The Economist magazine – measures the level of democracy in countries based upon five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture.  

Depending on their relative scores in each of these categories, countries are organised into four types of regimes: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes. 

Cambodia, with an overall score of 4.87 on a 10-point scale, falls into the hybrid regime category, governments that are characterised as having a non-independent judiciary, “weak” civil society and rule of law, and “widespread” corruption. 37 countries on the global listing are defined as such.

The Kingdom scored lowest on the political participation measure, with a score of 2.78 on a 10-point scale, and highest on the measure of its electoral process and pluralism, with a score of 6.08.

Its ranking was relatively unchanged compared to last year, when it landed at spot 100 on the list.

Only two Asian countries qualified as full democracies on the global index – Japan and South Korea.

A government spokesman could not be reached for comment.