Are South Asia's Giants Lagging Behind Smaller Nations?
South Asia, a region characterized by cultural and political diversity, presents a complex and varied picture regarding the evolution of democracy over the past decade. While nations like India and Pakistan have traditionally dominated in scholarly and popular discussions of South Asia due to their significant geopolitical influence, economic power, and population size, the smaller nations in the region mostly fall out of the focus.
Over the past decade, the democratic trajectories of South Asia’s smaller nations—such as Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka—contrast sharply with India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. According to the Global State of Democracy Indices data, while the smaller nations have shown either stability or improvement in key democratic indices, the larger countries have experienced significant declines. These trends seemingly align with previous scholarly work on state size and democratic rule and offer a more comprehensive picture of the situation of democracy in the region beyond the two major powers.
A Closer Look into the GSoD Indices
In this data byte, we analyze trends for large and small South Asia nations across five indices of democratic strength included in the Global State of Democracy (GSoD) dataset: Rule of Law, Rights, Representation, and Participation. These indices, themselves, contain various measures based on 165 individual indicators scholars and organizations. In the domain of Rule of Law, the GsoD looks at the Judicial Independence, Absence of Corruption, Predictable Enforcement of the Law, and the Personal Integrity and Security available for the citizens. Within the Rights metric, the GSoD measures Access to Justice, Civil Liberties, Basic Economic Welfare and Political Equality. For the Representation element, Credibility of Elections, Inclusive Suffrage, Political Party Freedom, nature of the Elected Government, effectiveness of the Parliament and extent of Local Democracy is measured. In the domain of Participation, robustness of the Civil Society, Civic Engagement, and Electoral Participation is scrutinized for each nation.
The GSoD Indices assess various aspects of democratic performance on a scale from 0 to 1, where 0 represents poor performance and 1 represents excellent performance. Here, we present data covering the past 10 years, from 2013 to 2023.
When analyzing the performance of South Asian nations across specific democratic indices, several patterns emerge, offering deeper insight into the region’s democratic dynamics. Smaller nations have generally shown improvements. On average, these nations have improved their Rule of Law index by approximately 14.5%, with notable cases like the Maldives, where this index increased by around 41%.
However, in larger countries like India and Pakistan, the Rule of Law has weakened. Overall, this index has decreased by approximately 9%, with a notable decline of around 11% in India.
Rights have followed a mixed trajectory across the region too. In the group of smaller countries, the trend shows an overall improvement of approximately 15%, with significant gains in Sri Lanka (around 11%) and the Maldives (about 22%).
For the larger nations, the trend for Rights shows a sharp decline of approximately 10%, with an even steeper drop in India, where it fell by around 23%.
The third index in the GSoD is Representation, which has improved in most smaller nations. Although with some ups and downs, most countries show improvements or consistently positive estimates, such as in the case of Bhutan. Overall, this trend reflects an increase of 15%, with countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka improving their estimates by approximately 45% and 27%, respectively. 
In contrast, the picture for Bangladesh, India and Pakistan in terms of representation is quite the opposite. While the decline in Pakistan (approximately 10%) is more moderate than in Bangladesh (around 25%) and India (around 16%), the overall trend for these countries shows a decrease of about 17% in representation.
With the exception of Sri Lanka between 2017 and 2021, participation rates have slightly improved in the smaller nations.
However, in India, the steep decline in participation over the past decade has been dramatic, with an estimated drop of around 32%. Similarly, Bangladesh experienced a decline in the participation index of 19%. In Pakistan, the situation is more nuanced, showing fluctuations over time.
The underlying reasons for these trends.
While it is difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons for the decline in democratic indices in larger countries and the improvements in smaller ones, we offer some tentative general explanations to help contextualize these trends. Over the past decade, countries like Nepal and the Maldives have undergone internal reforms, received international support, and adopted a focused approach to governance that prioritizes democratic principles. In contrast, India and Pakistan have experienced a multifaceted wave of political turbulence, including internal political strife, the rise of majoritarian politics, and challenges in upholding the rule of law. In the case of Bangladesh, the deterioration of democracy is likely attributed to several factors: the increasing centralization of power, greater control over state institutions by the ruling party, and human rights abuses, including restrictions on freedom of expression and crackdowns on civil society organizations.
