V-Dem Democracy Indices

[[File:V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index 2025 Robinson World.svg|alt=|thumb|Map of V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index for 2024

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{{Legend|#0c3091|0.900–1.000}}

{{legend|#2f5cd5|0.800–0.899}}

{{legend|#6bd2df|0.700–0.799}}

{{legend|#c3eded|0.600–0.699}}

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{{legend|#f9f8bb|0.500–0.599}}

{{legend|#fad45d|0.400–0.499}}

{{legend|#da820f|0.300–0.399}}

{{legend|#a8261f|0.200–0.299}}

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{{legend|#66000f|0.100–0.199}}

{{legend|#240011|0.000–0.099}}

{{legend|#c0c0c0|No data}}

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As of 2022, the V-Dem Institute published 483 indicators and republishes 59 other indicators.{{Cite web |title=New democracy dataset to 'revolutionize' democracy research |date=8 January 2016 |url=https://news.nd.edu/news/new-democracy-dataset-to-revolutionize-democracy-research/}}{{Cite news |last1=Tucker |first1=Joshua |title=Open data and (15 million!) new measures of democracy |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/02/12/open-data-and-15-million-new-measures-of-democracy/ |newspaper=Washington Post}} V-Dem publishes five core indices with several other supplementary indices. The core indices are the electoral democracy index, the liberal democracy index, the participatory democracy index, the Deliberative Democracy Index and the egalitarian democracy index.Coppedge, Michael; John Gerring; Carl Henrik Knutsen; Staffan I. Lindberg; Jan Teorell; Kyle L. Marquardt; Juraj Medzihorsky; Daniel Pemstein; Nazifa Alizada; Lisa Gastaldi; Garry Hindle; Johannes von Römer; Eitan Tzelgov; Yi-ting Wang; and Steven Wilson. 2020. "V-Dem Methodology v10". Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.

;The Electoral Democracy Index

:This index measures the principle of electoral or representative democracy, including whether elections were free and fair, as well as the prevalence of a free and independent media. This index is part of all the other indices as a central component of democracy.Coppedge, Michael; John Gerring; Carl Henrik Knutsen; Staffan I. Lindberg; Jan Teorell; David Altman; Michael Bernhard; Agnes Cornell; M. Steven Fish; Lisa Gastaldi; Haakon Gjerløw; Adam Glynn; Allen Hicken; Anna Lührmann; Seraphine F. Maerz; Kyle L. Marquardt; Kelly McMann; Valeriya Mechkova; Pamela Paxton; Daniel Pemstein; Johannes vonRömer; Brigitte Seim; Rachel Sigman; Svend-Erik Skaaning; Jeffrey Staton; Aksel Sundtröm; EitanTzelgov; Luca Uberti; Yi-ting Wang; Tore Wig; and Daniel Ziblatt (2021). [https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/be/11/be11d657-a240-4fb0-a47f-bc151296e779/codebook.pdf "V-Dem Codebook v11"]. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210608011903/https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/be/11/be11d657-a240-4fb0-a47f-bc151296e779/codebook.pdf|date=8 June 2021}}.

;Liberal Democracy Index

:This index incorporates measures of rule of law, checks and balances, and civil liberties along with the concepts measured in the electoral democracy index.

;Participatory Democracy Index

:This index measures the degree to which citizens participate in their own government through local democratic institutions, civil society organizations, direct democracy, and the concepts measured in the electoral democracy index.

;Deliberative Democracy Index

:{{see also | Deliberative democracy}}

:This index measures the degree to which decisions are made in the best interest of the people as opposed to due to coercion or narrow interest groups, in addition to the basic electoral democracy index.

;Egalitarian Democracy Index

:{{see also | Political egalitarianism}}

:This index measures the level of equal access to resources, power, and freedoms across various groups within a society, in addition to the level of electoral democracy.

File:Political regime, 2023.svg

V-Dem maintains the Regimes of the World index, which classifies governments using data from its other indices as either a closed autocracy, electoral autocracy, electoral democracy, or liberal democracy. It is heavily inspired by Robert Dahl's theory of polyarchy based on six institutional guarantees: elected officials, free and fair elections, freedom of expression, alternative sources of information, associational autonomy, and inclusive citizenship.{{Cite journal |last1=Lührmann |first1=Anna |last2=Tannenberg |first2=Marcus |last3=Lindberg |first3=Staffan I. |date=19 March 2018 |title=Regimes of the World (RoW): Opening New Avenues for the Comparative Study of Political Regimes |url=https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/1214/714 |journal=Politics and Governance |volume=6 |issue=1 |access-date=May 16, 2025 |pages=60–77 |issn=2183-2463 |doi=10.17645/pag.v6i1.1214 |doi-access=free |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250321135605/https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/1214/714 |archive-date=March 21, 2025 }}

Regimes where leaders are not de facto accountable to citizens and may lack multiparty or free and fair elections. Dahl's institutional prerequisites are not fulfilled.

;Closed Autocracy

{{See also|Autocracy}}

Governments which lack multiparty elections for the chief executive or the legislature, or lack any competition such as in one-party states. Legislative institutions are de facto undermined and electoral accountability is evaded.

;Electoral Autocracy

{{See also|Electoral autocracy}}

Governments where the chief executive, legislature, or both are accountable in de jure multiparty elections. They fall short of democratic standards due to irregularities, limitations on party competition, and violations of Dahl's prerequisites. They are closely related to theories of electoral authoritarianism and competitive authoritarianism.

Regimes with de facto multiparty, free and fair elections. Dahl's institutional prerequisites are at least minimally fulfilled.

;Electoral Democracy

{{see also|Representative democracy}}

Regimes that posses the bare minimum to be considered a democracy. They are "de-facto accountable to citizens through periodic elections", but are not liberal democracies and lack further entrenched individual and minority rights beyond the electoral sphere. Basic electoral democracies may not posses a fully developed rule of law, legislative and judicial oversight of the executive branch, protections against the "tyranny of the majority", and only minimal fulfillment of Robert Dahl's institutional prerequisites for democracy.

;Liberal Democracy

{{see also|Liberal democracy}}

Regimes that posses the rule of law and satisfy liberal principles. They provide checks and balances between legislative and judicial oversight of the executive branch, limitations on government to prevent the "tyranny of the majority", protect individual liberties, and provide equal access to and protection under the law. A fully developed rule of law is essential for liberal democracies, as it ensures decisions are implemented. It is sometimes referred to as a "Madisonian" democracy.

The table below shows V-Dem Democracy rankings published for 2024.{{cite web | title=Democracy Report 2025, 25 Years of Autocratization – Democracy Trumped? | url=https://v-dem.net/documents/54/v-dem_dr_2025_lowres_v1.pdf | access-date=14 March 2025}}{{cite web | date=2025| title=The V-Dem Dataset – V-Dem | website=V-Dem | url=https://v-dem.net/data/the-v-dem-dataset/ | access-date=14 March 2025 |publisher=V-Dem Institute}}{{cite book | url=https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108347860 | doi=10.1017/9781108347860 | title=Varieties of Democracy | date=2020 | last1=Coppedge | first1=Michael | last2=Gerring | first2=John | last3=Glynn | first3=Adam | last4=Knutsen | first4=Carl Henrik | last5=Lindberg | first5=Staffan I. | last6=Pemstein | first6=Daniel | last7=Seim | first7=Brigitte | last8=Skaaning | first8=Svend-Erik | last9=Teorell | first9=Jan | last10=Altman | first10=David | last11=Bernhard | first11=Michael | last12=Bizzarro | first12=Fernando | last13=Krusell | first13=Joshua | last14=Maguire | first14=Matthew | last15=Marquardt | first15=Kyle | last16=McCann | first16=Kelly | last17=Mechkova | first17=Valeriya | last18=Miri | first18=Farhad | last19=Pernes | first19=Josefine | last20=Staton | first20=Jeffrey | last21=Stepanova | first21=Natalia | last22=Tzelgov | first22=Eitan | last23=Wang | first23=Yi-Ting | isbn=978-1-108-34786-0 }}

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The Digital Society Project is a subset of indicators on V-Dem's survey that asks questions about social media's political status and the internet. Specifically, the Digital Society Project measures a range of questions related to internet censorship, misinformation online, and internet shutdowns.Mechkova, Valeriya; Daniel Pemstein; Brigitte Seim; & Steven Wilson. (2020). Digital Society Project Dataset v2.Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. http://digitalsocietyproject.org/. This annual report includes 35 indicators assessing five areas: disinformation, digital media freedom, state regulation of digital media, the polarization of online media, and online social cleavages.{{cite book |last1=Mechkova |first1=Valeriya |url=http://digitalsocietyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/DSP-Codebook-v3.pdf |title=Digital Society Survey Codebook |last2=Pemstein |first2=Daniel |last3=Seim |first3=Brigitte |last4=Wilson |first4=Steven |publisher=Digital Society Project |year=2021}}{{cite conference |last1=Fletcher |first1=Terry |last2=Hayes-Birchler |first2=Andria|date=2020-07-30 |title=Comparing Measures of Internet Censorship: Analyzing the Tradeoffs between Expert Analysis and Remote Measurement |url=https://zenodo.org/record/3967398 |conference=Data for Policy 2020 |conference-url=https://dataforpolicy.org/}} It has been updated each year starting in 2019, with data covering from 2000–2021. Similar to other expert analyses like Freedom House, these data are more prone to false positives when compared with remotely sensed data, such as that from Access Now or the OpenNet Initiative.

{{Excerpt|Democracy indices|Critiques of measures of democracy}}

Political scientist Jonas Wolff criticized V-Dem for gradually abandoning a pluralist conceptualization of democracy. According to him, V-Dem has moved away from its original emphasis on the conceptual varieties of democracy and adopted an uncontested view of democracy as liberal democracy while also ignoring the limitations of liberal democracy.{{Cite journal |last=Wolff |first=Jonas |date=2022-07-06 |title=From the Varieties of Democracy to the defense of liberal democracy: V-Dem and the reconstitution of liberal hegemony under threat |journal=Contemporary Politics |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=161–181 |doi=10.1080/13569775.2022.2096191 |s2cid=250372421 |issn=1356-9775|doi-access=free }}

The V-Dem dataset does not cover some countries, namely: Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Brunei, Dominica, Federated States of Micronesia, Grenada, Kiribati, Liechtenstein, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Nauru, Palau, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Tonga, Tuvalu, and the Vatican.

• Academic Freedom Index

{{reflist}}

• Vanessa A. Boese, Markus Eberhardt: [https://www.v-dem.net/media/publications/Working_Paper_131.pdf "Which Institutions Rule? Unbundling the Democracy-Growth Nexus"], V-Dem Institute, Series 2022:131, February 2022.

• [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/world/americas/democracy-decline-worldwide.html Max Fisher, "U.S. Allies Drive Much of World's Democratic Decline, Data Shows: Washington-aligned countries backslid at nearly double the rate of non-allies, data shows, complicating long-held assumptions about American influence"]. The New York Times. November 16, 2021.

• [https://www.v-dem.net/ Official website]

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Category:Democracy promotion

Category:Psephology

Category:Democracy

Category:International rankings

Category:Social science indices