The V-Dem Democracy Indices is a dataset that describe qualities of different governments published by V-Dem Institute. This dataset is published on an annual basis and is publicly available and free. [1] In particular, the V-Dem dataset is a popular dataset among political scientists used to describe the characteristics of political regimes around the world. In total, datasets released by the V-Dem Institute include information on hundreds of indicator variables describing all aspects of government, especially on the quality of democracy, inclusivity, and other economic indicators. An R package automatically bundles new data. [2]
The V-Dem Institute's measures of democracy are the most elaborate and granular among several democracy indexes (such as the Polity data series and Freedom House's Freedom in the World ). [3] By 2020, the V-Dem index had "more than 470 indicators, 82 mid-level indices, and 5 high-level indices covering 202 polities from the period of 1789–2019". [3] Each indicator is coded independently by at least five country experts. [3] V-Dem uses methodological tools to deal with rating reliability and confidence intervals in the expert ratings. [3] Political scientist Daniel Hegedus describes V-Dem as "the most important provider of quantitative democracy data for scholarly research". [3]
The Regimes of the World (RoW) [4] [5] distinguishes four types of political systems: closed autocracies, electoral autocracies, electoral democracies, and liberal democracie, this classification is built on V-Dem Democracy Core indices. [6]
Graphs are temporarily unavailable due to technical issues. |
The V-Dem institute publishes, as of 2022, 483 indicators unique to V-Dem institute and republishes 59 other indicators. [7] [8] 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. [9]
Map of V-Dem's 2023 Index of Liberal Democracy [10]
Red indicates more authoritarian, green indicates more democratic.
Graphs are temporarily unavailable due to technical issues. |
The V-Dem institute publishes several other[ which? ] indices which are created, in part, with the assistance of other V-Dem indices.
The table below shows how countries score on the 5 high-level V-Dem Democracy indices in 2023. [10]
Country | Electoral Democracy | Liberal Democracy | Participatory Democracy | Deliberative Democracy | Egalitarian Democracy |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Denmark | 0.916 | 0.889 | 0.702 | 0.877 | 0.878 |
Norway | 0.899 | 0.857 | 0.645 | 0.872 | 0.86 |
Sweden | 0.899 | 0.87 | 0.643 | 0.806 | 0.816 |
Switzerland | 0.898 | 0.851 | 0.801 | 0.863 | 0.834 |
Estonia | 0.893 | 0.847 | 0.619 | 0.754 | 0.798 |
Ireland | 0.889 | 0.824 | 0.634 | 0.808 | 0.792 |
New Zealand | 0.889 | 0.834 | 0.67 | 0.779 | 0.786 |
Belgium | 0.887 | 0.825 | 0.633 | 0.812 | 0.823 |
Luxembourg | 0.881 | 0.797 | 0.584 | 0.839 | 0.822 |
France | 0.874 | 0.803 | 0.602 | 0.806 | 0.753 |
Spain | 0.873 | 0.791 | 0.618 | 0.765 | 0.724 |
Costa Rica | 0.871 | 0.821 | 0.627 | 0.821 | 0.771 |
Finland | 0.861 | 0.816 | 0.612 | 0.792 | 0.779 |
Australia | 0.858 | 0.814 | 0.614 | 0.786 | 0.726 |
Germany | 0.857 | 0.807 | 0.615 | 0.816 | 0.792 |
Czech Republic | 0.853 | 0.784 | 0.565 | 0.74 | 0.772 |
Netherlands | 0.852 | 0.8 | 0.58 | 0.804 | 0.765 |
Slovakia | 0.851 | 0.779 | 0.612 | 0.605 | 0.702 |
Canada | 0.847 | 0.739 | 0.6 | 0.715 | 0.669 |
Portugal | 0.846 | 0.753 | 0.58 | 0.737 | 0.723 |
Italy | 0.844 | 0.766 | 0.668 | 0.768 | 0.775 |
United Kingdom | 0.843 | 0.766 | 0.603 | 0.73 | 0.705 |
Japan | 0.833 | 0.736 | 0.537 | 0.744 | 0.761 |
Taiwan | 0.831 | 0.725 | 0.66 | 0.734 | 0.745 |
Argentina | 0.823 | 0.642 | 0.56 | 0.642 | 0.642 |
Latvia | 0.821 | 0.73 | 0.583 | 0.689 | 0.695 |
United States of America | 0.819 | 0.741 | 0.582 | 0.711 | 0.582 |
Iceland | 0.819 | 0.732 | 0.6 | 0.714 | 0.73 |
South Korea | 0.812 | 0.732 | 0.539 | 0.682 | 0.698 |
Chile | 0.811 | 0.755 | 0.571 | 0.758 | 0.619 |
Uruguay | 0.804 | 0.715 | 0.639 | 0.662 | 0.632 |
Slovenia | 0.799 | 0.704 | 0.579 | 0.702 | 0.685 |
Jamaica | 0.797 | 0.695 | 0.529 | 0.678 | 0.659 |
Lithuania | 0.797 | 0.741 | 0.588 | 0.648 | 0.687 |
Austria | 0.794 | 0.7 | 0.556 | 0.671 | 0.71 |
Trinidad and Tobago | 0.784 | 0.666 | 0.503 | 0.713 | 0.629 |
Greece | 0.783 | 0.6 | 0.536 | 0.684 | 0.659 |
Malta | 0.782 | 0.641 | 0.555 | 0.634 | 0.692 |
Barbados | 0.782 | 0.666 | 0.331 | 0.687 | 0.651 |
Cyprus | 0.777 | 0.644 | 0.479 | 0.63 | 0.672 |
Vanuatu | 0.771 | 0.656 | 0.483 | 0.615 | 0.596 |
Suriname | 0.77 | 0.653 | 0.498 | 0.606 | 0.579 |
Seychelles | 0.761 | 0.675 | 0.325 | 0.688 | 0.634 |
Moldova | 0.752 | 0.642 | 0.52 | 0.674 | 0.582 |
Cape Verde | 0.75 | 0.647 | 0.466 | 0.618 | 0.565 |
Peru | 0.744 | 0.627 | 0.517 | 0.444 | 0.455 |
Croatia | 0.738 | 0.648 | 0.507 | 0.587 | 0.577 |
Panama | 0.729 | 0.556 | 0.432 | 0.56 | 0.445 |
Israel | 0.723 | 0.65 | 0.473 | 0.612 | 0.591 |
Timor-Leste | 0.695 | 0.504 | 0.432 | 0.497 | 0.434 |
South Africa | 0.692 | 0.581 | 0.43 | 0.598 | 0.479 |
Senegal | 0.69 | 0.532 | 0.386 | 0.563 | 0.517 |
Colombia | 0.689 | 0.541 | 0.47 | 0.537 | 0.381 |
Romania | 0.689 | 0.547 | 0.499 | 0.35 | 0.482 |
Bulgaria | 0.688 | 0.613 | 0.486 | 0.588 | 0.546 |
Sao Tome and Principe | 0.684 | 0.578 | 0.429 | 0.521 | 0.488 |
Dominican Republic | 0.679 | 0.465 | 0.46 | 0.605 | 0.369 |
Brazil | 0.678 | 0.523 | 0.424 | 0.448 | 0.324 |
Ecuador | 0.657 | 0.5 | 0.462 | 0.461 | 0.41 |
Georgia | 0.647 | 0.504 | 0.408 | 0.532 | 0.515 |
Nepal | 0.646 | 0.501 | 0.427 | 0.394 | 0.419 |
Armenia | 0.645 | 0.445 | 0.401 | 0.502 | 0.54 |
Malawi | 0.642 | 0.538 | 0.406 | 0.511 | 0.382 |
Lesotho | 0.641 | 0.504 | 0.401 | 0.493 | 0.505 |
Liberia | 0.634 | 0.461 | 0.35 | 0.428 | 0.41 |
Namibia | 0.634 | 0.507 | 0.381 | 0.463 | 0.323 |
Ghana | 0.633 | 0.543 | 0.316 | 0.526 | 0.47 |
The Gambia | 0.62 | 0.496 | 0.395 | 0.458 | 0.421 |
Solomon Islands | 0.618 | 0.476 | 0.366 | 0.359 | 0.343 |
Kosovo | 0.618 | 0.463 | 0.36 | 0.414 | 0.432 |
Mexico | 0.598 | 0.346 | 0.4 | 0.358 | 0.331 |
Bolivia | 0.597 | 0.348 | 0.417 | 0.354 | 0.4 |
Maldives | 0.583 | 0.44 | 0.323 | 0.43 | 0.402 |
Paraguay | 0.581 | 0.433 | 0.354 | 0.346 | 0.252 |
Botswana | 0.577 | 0.462 | 0.375 | 0.378 | 0.399 |
Sri Lanka | 0.575 | 0.412 | 0.343 | 0.328 | 0.369 |
Poland | 0.574 | 0.425 | 0.353 | 0.358 | 0.494 |
Indonesia | 0.574 | 0.422 | 0.385 | 0.487 | 0.316 |
Mongolia | 0.566 | 0.431 | 0.293 | 0.434 | 0.38 |
Sierra Leone | 0.559 | 0.424 | 0.362 | 0.508 | 0.394 |
Honduras | 0.556 | 0.402 | 0.35 | 0.377 | 0.253 |
North Macedonia | 0.551 | 0.365 | 0.369 | 0.371 | 0.364 |
Bhutan | 0.535 | 0.434 | 0.328 | 0.495 | 0.446 |
Guyana | 0.535 | 0.365 | 0.312 | 0.26 | 0.38 |
Bosnia and Herzegovina | 0.528 | 0.365 | 0.318 | 0.355 | 0.366 |
Kenya | 0.522 | 0.425 | 0.36 | 0.449 | 0.353 |
Mauritius | 0.521 | 0.385 | 0.336 | 0.455 | 0.409 |
Zambia | 0.518 | 0.433 | 0.352 | 0.462 | 0.321 |
Niger | 0.511 | 0.382 | 0.329 | 0.461 | 0.354 |
Montenegro | 0.501 | 0.404 | 0.3 | 0.389 | 0.401 |
Madagascar | 0.495 | 0.259 | 0.293 | 0.283 | 0.217 |
Nigeria | 0.49 | 0.32 | 0.327 | 0.322 | 0.266 |
Albania | 0.484 | 0.409 | 0.3 | 0.273 | 0.355 |
Papua New Guinea | 0.458 | 0.366 | 0.275 | 0.273 | 0.268 |
Benin | 0.45 | 0.305 | 0.266 | 0.297 | 0.35 |
Hungary | 0.445 | 0.337 | 0.294 | 0.213 | 0.324 |
Malaysia | 0.438 | 0.304 | 0.255 | 0.323 | 0.339 |
Ivory Coast | 0.437 | 0.239 | 0.304 | 0.399 | 0.258 |
Guatemala | 0.435 | 0.263 | 0.259 | 0.239 | 0.174 |
Philippines | 0.431 | 0.283 | 0.287 | 0.36 | 0.193 |
Togo | 0.426 | 0.239 | 0.273 | 0.359 | 0.313 |
Lebanon | 0.426 | 0.258 | 0.248 | 0.319 | 0.26 |
Singapore | 0.425 | 0.339 | 0.121 | 0.356 | 0.361 |
Somaliland | 0.421 | 0.261 | 0.257 | 0.262 | 0.172 |
Ukraine | 0.406 | 0.234 | 0.273 | 0.351 | 0.317 |
Fiji | 0.406 | 0.267 | 0.215 | 0.303 | 0.282 |
India | 0.399 | 0.306 | 0.262 | 0.295 | 0.235 |
Tanzania | 0.398 | 0.359 | 0.264 | 0.334 | 0.348 |
Mauritania | 0.395 | 0.163 | 0.26 | 0.28 | 0.133 |
Pakistan | 0.388 | 0.26 | 0.256 | 0.32 | 0.156 |
Kyrgyzstan | 0.382 | 0.228 | 0.204 | 0.284 | 0.232 |
El Salvador | 0.378 | 0.147 | 0.218 | 0.149 | 0.144 |
Guinea-Bissau | 0.371 | 0.152 | 0.171 | 0.194 | 0.217 |
Gabon | 0.369 | 0.209 | 0.252 | 0.282 | 0.28 |
Iraq | 0.362 | 0.197 | 0.195 | 0.222 | 0.187 |
Mozambique | 0.362 | 0.243 | 0.229 | 0.225 | 0.244 |
Serbia | 0.361 | 0.265 | 0.25 | 0.231 | 0.316 |
Angola | 0.344 | 0.174 | 0.112 | 0.163 | 0.145 |
Democratic Republic of the Congo | 0.337 | 0.154 | 0.186 | 0.275 | 0.182 |
Central African Republic | 0.321 | 0.17 | 0.131 | 0.17 | 0.155 |
Ethiopia | 0.319 | 0.152 | 0.168 | 0.258 | 0.22 |
Kuwait | 0.317 | 0.301 | 0.101 | 0.267 | 0.236 |
Tunisia | 0.307 | 0.223 | 0.223 | 0.293 | 0.305 |
Cameroon | 0.297 | 0.137 | 0.122 | 0.122 | 0.191 |
Burkina Faso | 0.295 | 0.219 | 0.183 | 0.273 | 0.23 |
Uganda | 0.285 | 0.2 | 0.18 | 0.262 | 0.173 |
Zimbabwe | 0.285 | 0.186 | 0.215 | 0.215 | 0.189 |
Comoros | 0.284 | 0.115 | 0.206 | 0.191 | 0.226 |
Zanzibar | 0.284 | 0.233 | 0.173 | 0.264 | 0.256 |
Algeria | 0.281 | 0.134 | 0.11 | 0.184 | 0.26 |
Kazakhstan | 0.277 | 0.14 | 0.114 | 0.178 | 0.224 |
Turkey | 0.276 | 0.118 | 0.164 | 0.084 | 0.209 |
Bangladesh | 0.274 | 0.109 | 0.127 | 0.121 | 0.114 |
Morocco | 0.264 | 0.251 | 0.161 | 0.255 | 0.208 |
Palestine (West Bank) | 0.26 | 0.139 | 0.173 | 0.148 | 0.211 |
Jordan | 0.259 | 0.249 | 0.12 | 0.22 | 0.203 |
Djibouti | 0.255 | 0.125 | 0.151 | 0.147 | 0.192 |
Haiti | 0.248 | 0.155 | 0.109 | 0.215 | 0.07 |
Mali | 0.235 | 0.153 | 0.175 | 0.252 | 0.198 |
Republic of the Congo | 0.234 | 0.107 | 0.189 | 0.193 | 0.131 |
Rwanda | 0.228 | 0.117 | 0.172 | 0.213 | 0.211 |
Uzbekistan | 0.221 | 0.081 | 0.064 | 0.16 | 0.16 |
Venezuela | 0.214 | 0.064 | 0.159 | 0.041 | 0.106 |
Libya | 0.213 | 0.11 | 0.156 | 0.229 | 0.15 |
Russia | 0.209 | 0.071 | 0.142 | 0.073 | 0.15 |
Thailand | 0.206 | 0.179 | 0.109 | 0.073 | 0.16 |
Cambodia | 0.206 | 0.063 | 0.117 | 0.067 | 0.092 |
Guinea | 0.191 | 0.098 | 0.17 | 0.08 | 0.132 |
Burundi | 0.189 | 0.079 | 0.087 | 0.079 | 0.107 |
Azerbaijan | 0.188 | 0.063 | 0.059 | 0.048 | 0.098 |
Iran | 0.182 | 0.105 | 0.047 | 0.093 | 0.171 |
Cuba | 0.178 | 0.056 | 0.088 | 0.098 | 0.229 |
Nicaragua | 0.177 | 0.034 | 0.114 | 0.028 | 0.081 |
Egypt | 0.175 | 0.118 | 0.092 | 0.091 | 0.093 |
Belarus | 0.175 | 0.042 | 0.059 | 0.039 | 0.224 |
Tajikistan | 0.175 | 0.048 | 0.054 | 0.055 | 0.07 |
Equatorial Guinea | 0.172 | 0.051 | 0.048 | 0.043 | 0.111 |
Oman | 0.17 | 0.137 | 0.121 | 0.062 | 0.185 |
Sudan | 0.169 | 0.074 | 0.09 | 0.063 | 0.102 |
Somalia | 0.162 | 0.101 | 0.09 | 0.145 | 0.081 |
Vietnam | 0.157 | 0.115 | 0.159 | 0.174 | 0.194 |
Hong Kong | 0.154 | 0.126 | 0.056 | 0.048 | 0.191 |
Turkmenistan | 0.149 | 0.035 | 0.032 | 0.025 | 0.088 |
Chad | 0.14 | 0.031 | 0.087 | 0.101 | 0.069 |
Palestine (Gaza) | 0.138 | 0.081 | 0.122 | 0.071 | 0.165 |
Syria | 0.138 | 0.033 | 0.051 | 0.034 | 0.054 |
Laos | 0.134 | 0.108 | 0.115 | 0.057 | 0.129 |
South Sudan | 0.129 | 0.059 | 0.05 | 0.036 | 0.036 |
Yemen | 0.123 | 0.045 | 0.069 | 0.03 | 0.026 |
Bahrain | 0.122 | 0.055 | 0.036 | 0.068 | 0.113 |
Eswatini | 0.12 | 0.096 | 0.079 | 0.036 | 0.061 |
United Arab Emirates | 0.101 | 0.086 | 0.032 | 0.086 | 0.136 |
Myanmar | 0.093 | 0.046 | 0.093 | 0.062 | 0.067 |
Qatar | 0.088 | 0.083 | 0.022 | 0.104 | 0.099 |
North Korea | 0.087 | 0.01 | 0.045 | 0.011 | 0.084 |
Afghanistan | 0.082 | 0.028 | 0.019 | 0.025 | 0.019 |
China | 0.075 | 0.04 | 0.042 | 0.079 | 0.088 |
Eritrea | 0.073 | 0.012 | 0.011 | 0.033 | 0.124 |
Saudi Arabia | 0.016 | 0.043 | 0.026 | 0.06 | 0.109 |
A variety of other organizations use V-Dem's dataset in the construction of their indicators. [13] [14] USAID's Journey to Self Reliance Country Roadmap uses V-Dem's data to inform three of its indicators: Liberal Democracy (from V-Dem's Liberal Democracy Index), Social Group Equality (from V-Dem's Social Group Equality in Respect for Civil Liberties) and Civil Society and Media Effectiveness (from V-Dem's Diagonal Accountability Index). [13] The World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators also use V-Dem's data to inform their Control of Corruption indicator (includes V-Dem's Corruption index), Rule of Law Indicator (includes V-Dem's liberal component index), and the Voice and Accountability Indicator (includes V-Dem's Expanded freedom of expression, Freedom of association, and Clean elections indicators). [14]
The Digital Society Project is a subset of indicators on V-Dem's survey which asks questions about the political status of social media and the internet. [11] Specifically, the Digital Society Project measures a range of questions related to internet censorship, misinformation online, and internet shutdowns. [15] This annual report includes 35 indicators assessing five areas: disinformation, digital media freedom, state regulation of digital media, polarization of online media, and online social cleavages. [16] [17] It has been updated each year starting in 2019, with data covering from 2000-2021. [16] 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. [17]
V-Dem rankings were criticized by political sociologist Salvatore Babones for their decision to downgrade India while under Narendra Modi's premiership and called for a retraction; noting their evidence to be flawed and wildly disproportionate. While he agreed that the statistical models used by V-Dem for ranking countries are world-class the problem with indices, according to him, derives from "idiosyncratic choice of indicators", "inexplicable scaling decisions", and "vulnerability to expert biases". [18] [19] He found that V-Dem electoral indicators are unable to differentiate between genuine & 'sham' democracies because of which one-party dictatorships can score higher than real democracies on election quality. [20] [21] Political scientist Asutosh Varshney found V-Dem's proposition that India is an electoral autocracy an "overstretched claim". [22]
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 a liberal democracy while also ignoring the limitations of liberal democracy. [23]
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In politics, a regime is the form of government or the set of rules, cultural or social norms, etc. that regulate the operation of a government or institution and its interactions with society. The two broad categories of regimes that appear in most literature are democratic and autocratic. However, autocratic regimes can be broken down into a subset of many different types. The key similarity between all regimes are the presence of rulers, and either formal or informal institutions.
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influence working conditions in the relations of employment. One of the most prominent is the right to freedom of association, otherwise known as the right to organize. Workers organized in trade unions exercise the right to collective bargaining to improve working conditions.
According to The Economist Group's Democracy Index 2020 study, Israel is the only democratic country in the Middle East, while Tunisia is the only democracy in North Africa. The level of democracy in nations throughout the world published by various democracy indices, report the Middle Eastern and North African countries with the highest scores are Israel, Tunisia, Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan and Kuwait.
The Polity data series is a data series in political science research. Along with the V-Dem Democracy indices project and Democracy Index, Polity is among prominent datasets that measure democracy and autocracy.
The following are links to some international rankings of the United States.
Freedom in the World is a yearly survey and report by the U.S.-based non-governmental organization Freedom House that measures the degree of civil liberties and political rights in every nation and significant related and disputed territories around the world.
The following are international rankings of Japan.
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These are the international rankings of the United Kingdom.
An Internet outage or Internet blackout or Internet shutdown is the complete or partial failure of the internet services. It can occur due to censorship, cyberattacks, disasters, police or security services actions or errors.
A hybrid regime is a type of political system often created as a result of an incomplete democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. Hybrid regimes are categorized as having a combination of autocratic features with democratic ones and can simultaneously hold political repressions and regular elections. Hybrid regimes are commonly found in developing countries with abundant natural resources such as petro-states. Although these regimes experience civil unrest, they may be relatively stable and tenacious for decades at a time. There has been a rise in hybrid regimes since the end of the Cold War.
Staffan I. Lindberg, is a Swedish political scientist, Principal Investigator for Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute and Director of the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg. He is a professor in the Department of Political Science, and member of the Board of University of Gothenburg, Sweden member of the Young Academy of Sweden, Wallenberg Academy Fellow, Research Fellow at the Quality of Government Institute; and senior advisor for the Oslo Analytica.
Democratic backsliding, also called autocratization, is "a process of regime change towards autocracy that makes the exercise of political power more arbitrary and repressive and that restricts the space for public contestation and political participation in the process of government selection". Democratic decline involves the weakening of democratic institutions, such as the peaceful transition of power or free and fair elections, or the violation of individual rights that underpin democracy, especially freedom of expression.
Democracy in Africa is measured by a variety of indexes primarily devised by Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), such as V-Dem Democracy indices, and Democracy index by The Economist.
The V-Dem Institute is an independent research institute founded by Professor Staffan I. Lindberg in 2014 that studies the qualities of government. The institute is funded by a number of government organizations, World Bank and several research institutions. The headquarters of the project is based at the department of political science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Freedom on the Net is an annual report providing analytical reports and numerical ratings regarding the state of Internet freedom for countries worldwide, published by the American non-profit research and advocacy group Freedom House. The countries surveyed represent a sample with a broad range of geographical diversity and levels of economic development, as well as varying levels of political and media freedom.
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Democracy indices are assessments of the political systems of countries. They are published by intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations according to their own definitions.