Democracy indices (V-Dem)

The Democracy Indices by V-Dem are 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 popular among political scientists and describes the characteristics of political regimes worldwide. 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]

For overview of democracy indices, see Democracy indices.

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]

Democracy indices

Regimes of the World

The Regimes of the World (RoW)[4][5] distinguishes four types of political systems: closed autocracies, electoral autocracies, electoral democracies, and liberal democracies, this classification is built on V-Dem Democracy Core indices.[6]

  Liberal democracy: "electoral democracy and citizens enjoy individual and minority rights, are equal before the law, and the actions of the executive are constrained by the legislative and the courts"
  Electoral democracy: "citizens have the right to choose the chief executive and the legislature in meaningful, free and fair, and multi-party elections"
  Electoral autocracy: "citizens have the right to choose the chief executive and the legislature through multi-party elections; but they lack some freedoms, such as the freedoms of association or expression that make the elections meaningful, free, and fair"
  Closed autocracy: "citizens do not have the right to choose either the chief executive of the government or the legislature through multi-party elections"
  Geographic areas without data

V-Dem Core

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.

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.[11]
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.[11]
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.[11]
Deliberative Democracy Index
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.[11]
Egalitarian Democracy Index
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.[11]

Other Indices

The V-Dem institute publishes several other indices which are created, in part, with the assistance of other V-Dem indices.

Rankings

The table below shows how countries score on the 5 high-level V-Dem Democracy indices in 2023.[10][12]

V-Dem Democracy Indices (13th edition)
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 0.803 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 0.682 0.711 0.802
 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

Impact and usage
Countries autocratizing (red) or democratizing (blue) substantially and significantly (2010–2020). Countries in grey are substantially unchanged.[13]

A variety of other organizations use V-Dem's dataset in the construction of their indicators.[14][15] 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).[14] 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).[15]

Digital Society Project

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.[11] Specifically, the Digital Society Project measures a range of questions related to internet censorship, misinformation online, and internet shutdowns.[16] 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.[17][18] It has been updated each year starting in 2019, with data covering from 2000-2021.[17] 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.[18]

Criticisms

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.[19]

Political scientists Andrew T. Little and Anne Meng argue that the data produced by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project relies heavily on subjective, as opposed to objective, measures and thus are tainted by coder bias.[20]

See also

References
  1. "New index rates countries by degree of freedom for scholars".
  2. V-Dem Institute (2022). "The V-Dem Dataset". Retrieved 8 December 2022.
  3. Hegedüs, Daniel (2020). "Varieties of Democracy: Measuring Two Centuries of Political Change. By Michael Coppedge, John Gerring, Adam Glynn, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Svend-Erik Skaaning, and Jan Teorell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 226p. $99.99 cloth". Perspectives on Politics. 18 (4): 1258–1260. doi:10.1017/S1537592720003059. ISSN 1537-5927. S2CID 230623566.
  4. Lührmann, Anna, Marcus Tannenberg, and Staffan I. Lindberg. "Regimes of the world (RoW): Opening new avenues for the comparative study of political regimes". Politics and Governance 6.1 (2018): 60.
  5. Herre, Bastian (December 2, 2021). "The 'Regimes of the World' data: how do researchers measure democracy?". Our World in Data. Retrieved March 12, 2023.
  6. Herre, Bastian; Ortiz-Ospina, Esteban; Roser, Max (2013-03-15). "Democracy". Our World in Data. Retrieved 2023-03-16.
  7. "New democracy dataset to 'revolutionize' democracy research". 8 January 2016.
  8. Tucker, Joshua. "Open data and (15 million!) new measures of democracy". Washington Post.
  9. 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.
  10. V-Dem Institute (2023). "The V-Dem Dataset". Retrieved 14 October 2023.
  11. 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). "V-Dem Codebook v11". Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. Archived 8 June 2021 at the Wayback Machine
  12. Coppedge, Michael, et al. Varieties of democracy: Measuring two centuries of political change. Cambridge University Press, 2020.
  13. Nazifa Alizada, Rowan Cole, Lisa Gastaldi, Sandra Grahn, Sebastian Hellmeier, Palina Kolvani, Jean Lachapelle, Anna Lührmann, Seraphine F. Maerz, Shreeya Pillai, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2021. Autocratization Turns Viral. Democracy Report 2021. University of Gothenburg: V-Dem Institute. https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/74/8c/748c68ad-f224-4cd7-87f9-8794add5c60f/dr_2021_updated.pdf
  14. USAID (2020) FY 2021 USAID Journey to Self-Reliance Country RoadmapMethodology Guide. https://selfreliance.usaid.gov/docs/FY_2021_USAID_Journey_to_Self-Reliance_Country_Roadmap_Methodology_Guide.pdf
  15. "WGI-Documents". The World Bank. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  16. Mechkova, V., Daniel P., Brigitte S.,&Steven W. (2020). Digital Society Project Dataset v2.Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project http://digitalsocietyproject.org/
  17. Mechkova, Valeriya; Pemstein, Daniel; Seim, Brigitte; Wilson, Steven (2021). Digital Society Survey Codebook (PDF). Digital Society Project.
  18. Fletcher, Terry; Hayes-Birchler, Andria (2020-07-30). Comparing Measures of Internet Censorship: Analyzing the Tradeoffs between Expert Analysis and Remote Measurement. Data for Policy 2020.
  19. Wolff, Jonas (2022-07-06). "From the Varieties of Democracy to the defense of liberal democracy: V-Dem and the reconstitution of liberal hegemony under threat". Contemporary Politics. 29 (2): 161–181. doi:10.1080/13569775.2022.2096191. ISSN 1356-9775. S2CID 250372421.
  20. Andrew Little and Anne Meng,“Measuring Democratic Backsliding.“ PS: Political Science & Politics (forthcoming). https://osf.io/n32zk/

Further reading
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