Democracy Annual Report Orders Kosovo as Best in Western Balkans, Serbia Recent

The Swedish Institute V-Dem has released its annual Democracy report for 2024, where Kosovo ranks first in the Western Balkans, while Serbia as the last.

The V-Dem has four categories of democracy, where the best is liberal, the second is electoral democracy, the third is electoral autocracy, and the fourth is autocracy closed.

Kosovo, Montenegro and Northern Macedonia are in the second category -- that of “election democracy” -- while Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina have remained in the grey “ ”, between democracies and autism.

While, Serbia has been considered a “election democracy” by the V-Dem Institute since 2014.

In this year's report, Montenegro became a “election democracy” for the first time, while northern Macedonia returned to this category after falling to the grey “” last year, while Kosovo has been in this category since 2014.

Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania, on the other hand, have remained in “the grey democratic zone”, which means the V-Dem does not consider their results of democracy high enough to be classified into “mal democracies”.

The V-Dem Institute has said that Kosovo ranks 62nd out of 170 states in the Liberal Democracy Index and remains the country with the best result in the Western Balkans.

While Montenegro is 67th, followed by Albania, which is 82nd, Northern Macedonia is 89th, Bosnia is 92nd and Serbia is 107th.