V-Dem_Democracy_Indices

V-Dem Democracy Indices

V-Dem Democracy Indices

Measure of the state of democracy by V-Dem Institute

For overview of democracy indices, see Democracy indices.

The Democracy Indices by V-Dem are democracy indices published by the V-Dem Institute that describe qualities of different democracies. 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]

Map of V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index for 2023

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

As of 2022, the V-Dem Institute publishes 483 bespoke indicators and republishes 59 other indicators.[4][5] 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.[6]

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.[7]
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.[7]
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.[7]
Deliberative Democracy Index
See also: deliberative democracy
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.[7]
Egalitarian Democracy Index
See also: political egalitarianism
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.[7]

Rankings

The table below shows for V-Dem Democracy Indices published in 2024 with 2 high-level V-Dem Democracy indices and 4 mid-level Democracy Component indices evaluating the state of democracy in year 2023.[8][9][10]

More information Country, Democracy Indices ...

Impact and usage

Countries autocratizing (red) or democratizing (blue) substantially and significantly (2010–2020). Countries in grey are substantially unchanged.[11]

A variety of other organizations use V-Dem's dataset in the construction of their indicators.[12][13] 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).[12] 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).[13] The Democracy Report is annually created by V-Dem Institute from the V-Dem Democracy indices.[14]

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.[7] 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, the 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]

Criticisms

This section is an excerpt from Democracy indices § Critiques of measures of democracy.[edit]
Data on democracy, and particularly global indices of democracy, have been scrutinized and criticized by various scholars. Gerardo L. Munck and Jay Verkuilen questioned various aspects of the data produced by Freedom House and Polity, such as the concept of democracy they measured, the design of indicators, and the aggregation rule.[18] Political scientists Andrew T. Little and Anne Meng "highlight measurement concerns regarding time-varying bias in expert-coded data" such as Freedom House and V-Dem and encourage improving expert-coding practices.[19] Knutsen et al.[20] did not see evidence for time-varying bias in their expert-coded data and note the application of item response theory, factor analysis and estimates of uncertainties to limit expert biases while discussing concerns in operationalization of observer-invariant measures of democracy.

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.[21]

The V-Dem dataset does not cover some countries such as Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Brunei, Dominica, Federated States of Micronesia, Grenada, Kiribati, Liechtenstein, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Nauru, Palau, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Tonga, Tuvalu.

See also

References

  1. [1]
    "New index rates countries by degree of freedom for scholars".
  2. [2]
    V-Dem Institute (2022). "The V-Dem Dataset". Retrieved 8 December 2022.
  3. [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. [4]
    "New democracy dataset to 'revolutionize' democracy research". 8 January 2016.
  5. [5]
    Tucker, Joshua. "Open data and (15 million!) new measures of democracy". Washington Post.
  6. [6]
    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.
  7. [7]
    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
  8. [8]
    Democracy Report 2024, Varieties of Democracy
  9. [9]
    V-Dem Institute (2024). "The V-Dem Dataset". Retrieved 7 March 2024.
  10. [10]
    Coppedge, Michael, et al. Varieties of democracy: Measuring two centuries of political change. Cambridge University Press, 2020.
  11. [11]
    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
  12. [12]
    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
  13. [13]
    "WGI-Documents". The World Bank. Retrieved 2021-06-27.
  14. [14]
    Democracy Report 2023, Table 3, V-Dem Institute, 2023
  15. [15]
    Mechkova, V., Daniel P., Brigitte S.,&Steven W. (2020). Digital Society Project Dataset v2.Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project http://digitalsocietyproject.org/
  16. [16]
    Mechkova, Valeriya; Pemstein, Daniel; Seim, Brigitte; Wilson, Steven (2021). Digital Society Survey Codebook (PDF). Digital Society Project.
  17. [17]
    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.
  18. [18]
    Gerardo L. Munck and Jay Verkuilen, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: Evaluating Alternative Indices,” Comparative Political Studies 35, 1 (2002): 5-34. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.469.3177&rep=rep1&type=pdf
  19. [19]
    Little, Andrew T.; Meng, Anne (2024-01-11). "Measuring Democratic Backsliding". PS: Political Science & Politics: 1–13. doi:10.1017/S104909652300063X. ISSN 1049-0965.
  20. [20]
    Knutsen, Carl Henrik; Marquardt, Kyle L.; Seim, Brigitte; Coppedge, Michael; Edgell, Amanda B.; Medzihorsky, Juraj; Pemstein, Daniel; Teorell, Jan; Gerring, John; Lindberg, Staffan I. (2024-01-11). "Conceptual and Measurement Issues in Assessing Democratic Backsliding". PS: Political Science & Politics: 1–16. doi:10.1017/S104909652300077X. ISSN 1049-0965.
  21. [21]
    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.

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