By Mark Dovich

On May 6, Freedom House released the 2020 Nations in Transit report, which assesses political reform in the former Communist states in Europe and Eurasia through a “democracy score” system. This system assesses factors such as media independence and corruption levels and then expresses them as a number on a scale from 1.00 to 7.00, with 7.00 being the most democratic.

Though the report bemoans the “stunning democratic breakdown” the region has seen in recent years, it also singles out Armenia and Ukraine for praise, both of which are now led by reformist politicians.

The report points out that Armenia earned “the largest two-year improvement ever recorded” for democracy scores since the Nations in Transit series was first published in 1995. Since Armenia’s 2018 Velvet Revolution, the country’s democracy score has improved from 2.57 to 3.00, its highest ever rating.

At the same, the report cautioned that systemic judicial corruption and ongoing environmental issues related to the controversial Amulsar Gold Mine project remain causes for concern for Armenia’s democratic development.

In Armenia’s immediate neighborhood, Azerbaijan was given a rating of 1.14, a slight increase from the score of 1.07 that the country had received every year from 2017 to 2019. Of all 29 countries surveyed, only Turkmenistan scored lower with a 1.00 rating.

Meanwhile, Georgia was given a score of 3.25, a slight decrease from last year’s 3.29. Georgia’s score has declined every year since 2017, when it peaked at 3.39. Despite that decline, Georgia’s score of 3.25 remains the highest among post-Soviet countries outside the Baltics. 

The Nations in Transit report comes just over two months after Freedom House published the 2020 update to its renowned Freedom in the World report. That report, which places countries into “free”, “partly free”, and “not free” categories, showed steady annual improvement in political rights and civil liberties in Armenia, though the country remains classified as only “partly free”.