The Economist Intelligence Unit's democracy index ranks Cameroon 126th out of 167 countries, placing it in the list of states considered to be governed by authoritarian regimes. Cameroon's ranking is above that of neighbouring Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, which are placed at 133rd and 160th, but is marginally below Nigeria, which is ranked 123rd. Cameroon's lowest score, of 1.17 (with 10 being the best possible score), is for electoral process, reflecting the frequent allegations of electoral fraud and the amendment of the constitution in 2008 to allow presidents to serve an indefinite number of terms in office. Cameroon's highest-scoring indicator, of 5, for political culture, is just above the regional average, 4.96, benefiting from the country's relative political and economic stability. Cameroon receives its next-best score, of 4.29, for functioning of government, reflecting the relative quality of the bureaucracy, which nonetheless suffers from severe shortcomings, and the government's overwhelming parliamentary majority, which facilitates the passage of its legislative agenda.

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Reflecting the country's political stagnation and the 28 years that the president, Paul Biya, has been in power, the underlying indicators of the quality of Cameroon's democracy have changed very little since the 2008 index was prepared. Overall Cameroon's score fell from 3.46 in 2008 to 3.41 in 2010, and its global ranking was unchanged. The sole, slight improvement to Cameroon's score was for political participation, as a result of the greater representation of women in parliament; 14% of the members of parliament in Cameroon were women in 2009. The score for political participation, however, still remains low, at 2.78, well below the regional average of 3.74. The overall score decline was driven by a fall in the country's score for civil liberties, which fell from 4.12 in 2008 to 3.82 in 2010 as a result of two new laws regulating Internet usage. The new laws were introduced ostensibly to fight Internet criminality. According to a US-based computer security company, McAfee, Cameroon's web domain suffix, ".cm", was the world's riskiest web domain in 2009: more than one-third of websites using the suffix were considered a "security risk". However, the new law regulating electronic media, among other things, extends libel laws to the Internet (including to newspapers, blogs and discussion boards) and appears to be a further step in the government's crackdown on dissent ahead of the 2011 presidential election.

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Democracy index 2010: Democracy in retreat, a free white paper containing the full index and detailed methodology, can be downloaded from www.eiu.com/DemocracyIndex2010.

Note on methodology

There is no consensus on how to measure democracy and definitions of democracy are contested. Having free and fair competitive elections, and satisfying related aspects of political freedom, is the sine qua non of all definitions. However, our index is based on the view that measures of democracy that reflect the state of political freedom and civil liberties are not "thick" enough: they do not encompass sufficiently some crucial features that determine the quality and substance of democracy. Thus, the index also includes measures of political participation, political culture and functioning of government, which are, at best, marginalised by other measures.

Our index of democracy covers 167 countries and territories. The index, on a 0 to 10 scale, is based on the ratings for 60 indicators grouped in five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. The five categories are inter-related and form a coherent conceptual whole. Each category has a rating on a 0 to 10 scale, and the overall index of democracy is the simple average of the five category indexes.

The category indexes are based on the sum of the indicator scores in the category, converted to a 0 to 10 scale. Adjustments to the category scores are made if countries fall short in the following critical areas for democracy:

• whether national elections are free and fair;
• the security of voters;
• the influence of foreign powers on government; and
• the capability of the civil service to implement policies.

The index values are used to place countries within one of four types of regime:

• full democracies-scores of 8 to 10;
• flawed democracies-scores of 6 to 7.9;
• hybrid regimes-scores of 4 to 5.9;
• authoritarian regimes-scores below 4.