Data Mechanics

Democracy indices (V-Dem)

Five V-Dem indices that rate how democratic a country is, from 0 to 1.

The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project at the University of Gothenburg rates political regimes with five indices from 0 (least democratic) to 1 (most democratic). Each index captures one idea of democracy: free and fair elections (electoral), individual rights and limits on power (liberal), citizens taking part (participatory), decisions based on public reasoning (deliberative) and equal access to power across social groups (egalitarian). The scores combine the ratings of thousands of country experts through a statistical model. Our World in Data republishes the central estimates.

World map · Electoral democracy

Source: V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data (updated 2026-03-17) · fetched 26 Oct 2026

Over time · Electoral democracy

Source: V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data (updated 2026-03-17) · fetched 26 Oct 2026

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Every country, year and measure, with the source on each row.

Portrait of Klaus Jürgen Folz

About the author

Hello there, I’m Klaus Jürgen Folz. I studied Mechanical Engineering at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil, and I work in Austria as a lead Python and Power BI developer. I built Data Mechanics because good decisions start with facts. Public data is often scattered, hard to find or locked behind paywalls, and too much of what we read about the world is biased. Here, every number is shown as it was published, next to its source, so anyone can check it, compare countries and leaders, and draw their own conclusions.

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