Rule of law index (V-Dem)

How far laws are clear, public, stable and applied equally, including to the government, from 0 to 1.

The V-Dem rule of law index measures how far laws are transparent and applied equally, how far the courts and the public administration are independent and free of corruption, and how far the government itself obeys the law. It runs from 0 (least) to 1 (most). Like the other V-Dem indices, it combines the ratings of thousands of country experts through a statistical model. Our World in Data republishes the central estimates.

World map · Rule of law index

Source: V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data (updated 2026-03-17) · fetched 29 Oct 2026

Over time · Rule of law index

Source: V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data (updated 2026-03-17) · fetched 29 Oct 2026

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All countries · Rule of law index

Source: V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data (updated 2026-03-17) · fetched 29 Oct 2026

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Every country and year, 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.