Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Today, we're going to unveil the Econom' country of the year for 2021, the place that

most improved over the past 12 months. We'll speak to the editorial staff to run through which

countries they nominated and why. Settling on a winner this year, or even nominees, wasn't easy.

Improvement was pretty hard to find no matter which region we examined.

Before we get to the shortlist, we're going to look at one region that offered up no contenders

whatsoever, a region that typified that slow slide of civic conditions, South and Southeast Asia.

Some analysts talk about what's happening as a sort of democratic recession,

but the term recession really implies something cyclical with inevitable recovery.

You hit the bottom and then you start going back up.

The problem is in much of Asia, that's a heroic assumption.

Leo Morani is our Asia editor and is based in Mumbai.

Across the entire continent, the pandemic has given leaders the opportunity to flex their

authoritarian muscles, and they've been expanding the limits of their power.

So where is this happening?

Where is it not happening, Jason?

Let's start with Southeast Asia.

That had a particularly bad 2021, especially Myanmar, which had a coup on February 1st.

Its army chief seized power and has since ruled with terror.

It's now the second coup-led military dictatorship in the region after Thailand.

...