The ‘Regimes of the World’ data: how do researchers measure democracy?

Measuring the state of democracy across the world helps us understand the extent to which people have political rights and freedoms.

But measuring democracy comes with many challenges. People do not always agree on what characteristics define a democracy. These characteristics — such as whether an election was free and fair — are difficult to define and assess. The judgment of experts is to some degree subjective. They may disagree about a specific characteristic or how something as complex as a political system can be reduced into a single measure.

How do researchers address these challenges and measure democracy?

What is the Regimes of the World data?

In some of our work on democracy, we rely on the Regimes of the World (RoW) data by political scientists Anna Lührmann, Marcus Tannenberg, and Staffan Lindberg¹, published by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project.²

The project is managed by Online Roulette the V-Dem Institute, based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. It spans seven more regional centers around the world and is run by five principal investigators, dozens of project and regional managers, and more than 100 country coordinators.

V-Dem is funded through grants and donations by government agencies and private foundations, such as the Swedish Research Council, the European Commission, and the Marcus and Marianne Wallenberg Foundation.

How does RoW characterize democracy?

Regimes of the World distinguishes four types of political systems: closed autocracies, electoral autocracies, electoral democracies, and liberal democracies.

• Closed autocracy: citizens do not have the right to choose either the chief executive of the government or the legislature through 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
• Electoral democracy: citizens have the right to choose the chief executive and the legislature in meaningful, free and fair, and multi-party elections
• 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

You can find data on the more specific characteristics and derived measures in our Democracy Data Explorer.

How is democracy scored?

Regimes of the World treats democracy as a binary, by classifying a country as either a democracy or not.

This scoring thereby differs from other approaches such as Varieties of Democracy’s electoral democracy index and other projects, which classify countries as a spectrum, with some being scored as more democratic than others.

What years and countries are covered?

As of version 13 of the dataset, V-Dem covers 202 countries, going back in time as far as 1789. Many countries have been covered since 1900, including before they became independent from their colonial powers.

RoW covers countries and years since 1900. But we expand the years and countries covered and refine the coding rules, as detailed below.

How is democracy measured?

How does RoW work to make its assessments valid?

To measure what it wants to capture, RoW uses data from the Varieties of Democracy project, which assesses the characteristics of democracy mostly through evaluations by experts.³

These anonymous experts are primarily academics and members of the media and civil society. They are also often nationals or residents of the country they assess, and therefore know its political system well and can evaluate aspects that are difficult to observe.

V-Dem’s own team of researchers supplements the expert evaluations. They code some easier-to-observe rules and laws of the political system, such as whether the legislature has a lower and upper house.