Temporal multicriteria evaluation of the categories proposed by the ‘Democracy Index’ of the countries: a perspective based on the DARIA-TOPSIS Method

Abstract

This article analyzes the criteria of the ‘Democracy Index’ in countries, from 2017-2022, published by ‘The Economist’, aiming for an objective and comparative evaluation using the DARIA-TOPSIS method for temporal multicriteria assessment. The DARIA-TOPSIS method identified that among the top five ranked countries, the four most democratic ones are Nordic countries, with only New Zealand included in third place. Furthermore, the social and institutional trust, crucial for citizen participation observed in C_3 (Political Participation), reflects the high quality of democracy. These countries consistently exhibit high voter turnout rates and foster an active civil society culture in political decisions, as identified in C_1 (Electoral Process and Pluralism). Moreover, the variability of utility function values was better captured by the DARIA-TOPSIS method compared to a ranking based on average performance values (TOPSIS). However, the final order obtained by the methods generally coincides with or is very close.