This May 16, the ICI 2022 made by the Liberal Network of Latin America (Relial) was published in collaboration with all the organizations that comprise it and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for freedom.
This year, as in the past, the focus is on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on institutions worldwide. It explores the effects of states of emergency on the rule of law and individual guarantees, as well as possible future effects in the region.
The publication analyzes another eight measures of institutions (four of political quality and four of market quality). According to one of them, The Economist magazine Democracy Index , Ecuador, Mexico and Paraguay lost their status as “flawed democracies” to become “hybrid regimes”.
In terms of economic quality, the region does not have an encouraging outlook either. According to the Institutional Monetary Fund, Latin America will be the region with the lowest growth in 2022, largely due to trade restrictions caused by the pandemic.
“Many Latin American countries already had poor institutional quality before the pandemic and this has only aggravated it. Everyone will have to make extra efforts to first make up lost ground, and then move on and improve.” points out Martín Krause, author of the index.
This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of the ICI edition. Since the beginning of its publication, the Latin American countries that have advanced the most are Uruguay, Paraguay, Costa Rica and Ecuador, while those that have shown the greatest drop are Nicaragua, El Salvador, Bolivia and Venezuela.