V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2025.
Democracy Report 2025: Global Decline and Trends
Democracy Report 2025 Analysis
This briefing document summarizes the main themes, important ideas, and facts presented in the excerpts from the V Dem Democracy Report 2025 The reports are produced by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project.
1. V-Dem's Unique Approach to Measuring Democracy:
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Comprehensive and Multidimensional: V-Dem offers a "unique and comprehensive approach to measuring democracy" that is "historical, multidimensional, nuanced, and disaggregated."
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Extensive Data Collection: The project utilizes "state-of-the-art methodology" and involves "over 4,200 scholars and other country experts" to capture "over 600 different attributes of democracy" across "202 countries from 1789 to 2024." The dataset contains "over 31 million data points."
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Global Standards, Local Knowledge: A significant portion (61%) of expert coders are "born or residing in the main country they code," ensuring local expertise informs the data.
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Methodological Rigor: The Electoral Regime Transformation (ERT) method, used to identify and classify episodes of democratic or autocratic change, has undergone "extensive peer review in the scientific community and publications in several high-ranking journals."
2. Deepening Global Democratic Decline:
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Overarching Trend: The "overarching trend in global democracy as of 2024 is a deepening of global democratic decline." The report states, "25 Years of Autocratization – Democracy Trumped?" reflecting a concerning long-term trend.
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Key Factors Worsening: The factors contributing most significantly to this decline are "violence, media, and political polarization."
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Population-Weighted Averages Reveal Deeper Decline: While "country averages" in East Asia and the Pacific show relative stability or small increases in democracy, "population-weighted averages reveal a steady downward trend due to the influence of larger, less democratic nations." This highlights the importance of considering population size when assessing democratic trends. Figure 2 illustrates this divergence globally, showing population-weighted averages of the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) consistently lower than country averages.
3. Understanding Regime Classifications and Transitions:
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Liberal Democracy (LD) vs. Electoral Democracy (ED): The report distinguishes between these two forms of democracy. LD combines free and fair elections with strong protections for civil liberties and rule of law, measured by the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI). ED focuses on free and fair elections but may have weaker liberal democratic elements, measured by the Electoral Democracy Index (EDI).
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Electoral Autocracy (EA) and Closed Autocracy (CA): These represent varying degrees of autocratic rule, with EA often allowing some electoral processes that are not genuinely free or fair, and CA characterized by the absence of meaningful democratic institutions.
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"Grey Zone" Regimes: These are countries "whose classification as either electoral democracies or electoral autocracies is uncertain due to overlapping confidence intervals in the V-Dem data." Examples include "Albania, Kenya, Mexico, and Nigeria."
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Electoral Regime Transformation (ERT): This method identifies significant shifts in a country's EDI. Small annual changes (>0.01) that accumulate to a substantial level (>0.1) over several years are classified as episodes of democratization or autocratization.
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"Bell-Turns" and "U-Turns": A "bell-turn" is a regime transformation where "democratization is directly followed by autocratization." El Salvador, with democratic deepening followed by a reversal starting in 2019 under President Bukele, is presented as an example. Conversely, a "U-turn" involves autocratization followed by democratization. Figure 19 in the report highlights "U-turn democratizers" in 2024, including Poland, Brazil, and Bolivia.
4. Countries of Note in 2024:
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Stand-Alone Democratizers: Figure 17 and 18 identify countries experiencing ongoing democratization in 2024, with "Fiji and Seychelles" listed as "stand-alone democratizers." Table 8 highlights their "magnitude of improvement" on the LDI, with Fiji at the top (0.299 change since 2013) and Seychelles second (0.288 since 2012).
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Ongoing Autocratization: Figure 13 lists all 45 cases of ongoing autocratization as of 2024, including Belarus, Guinea, Afghanistan, and Hungary. Table 5 ranks countries by the "magnitude of decline" on the LDI, with Burkina Faso and El Salvador showing the most significant decreases.
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"Near Misses" and "Watchlist" Countries: "Near misses" are countries "at least halfway towards becoming autocratizers or democratizers" (EDI changes between 0.05 and 0.1). "Watchlist" countries are nearing the threshold for confirmed regime change with EDI changes above 0.075. Figure 23 visualizes these categories. Table 11 lists "Watchlist Autocratizers" like Slovakia and Slovenia, while Table 12 highlights "Watchlist Democratizers" such as Guatemala and Malaysia.
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USA - A Democratic Breakdown in the Making?:The report specifically flags the USA, with a dedicated section raising concerns about potential democratic breakdown.
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El Salvador's "Bell-Turn": The report details El Salvador's trajectory, noting the erosion of democratic norms under President Bukele, including "arbitrary arrests and mass incarcerations, restrictions to freedom of expression," and manipulation of term limits.
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Niger's Democratic Regression: Niger experienced its first democratic transition in 2020-2021 but subsequently underwent a military coup in July 2023, establishing a "closed autocracy."
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Guatemala's Potential U-Turn: After being classified as an autocratizer the previous year, Guatemala's 2023 election, which saw the opposition candidate win, places it "only a small margin away from becoming a U-turn."
5. Factors Contributing to Democratic Decline (Beyond Violence, Media, and Polarization):
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Worsening Deliberation: Indicators of democratic deliberation, such as societal engagement in policy debates and elite consultations, are worsening in numerous countries, including "Mexico, Niger, The Philippines, and El Salvador."
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Undermining Liberal Aspects: Many countries are experiencing an increase in the undermining of "transparent laws with predictable enforcement," a decline in "legislature's capacity to investigate the executive's unconstitutional behavior," and a rise in "political killings by the state or its agents without due process of law." Examples include Belarus, Benin, and Myanmar.
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Government Disinformation and Political Polarization: Figure 1 illustrates the mean changes in government disinformation and political polarization, highlighting their significant increase in autocratizing countries.
6. Impact of DOGE Entity:
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The report mentions the emergence of an opaque entity named DOGE, which "has already fired tens of thousands of government employees, including United States Agency for International Development (USAID) officers, effectively closing an agency that was a major actor in international democracy support." This action is described as having "grave and enduring consequences...for democracy globally."
7. Understanding V-Dem Data:
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Point Estimates and Confidence Intervals: The V-Dem dataset provides a "best estimate" (point estimate) for each indicator along with an "uncertainty estimate" (confidence intervals or credible regions).
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Different Data Versions: The dataset includes various versions of indicators (e.g., interval, ordinal, linearized) to suit different analytical needs.
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Significance Testing: "When the upper and lower bounds of the confidence intervals for two point estimates do not overlap, we are confident that the difference between them is not a result of measurement error."
In conclusion, the Democracy Report 2025 paints a concerning picture of a deepening global democratic decline, driven by factors like violence, media polarization, and government disinformation. The report provides a nuanced analysis of regime types, transitions, and countries of particular concern using V-Dem's comprehensive data and rigorous methodologies. The rise of opaque actors like DOGE and their impact on democracy support further exacerbate these challenges. The report emphasizes the importance of utilizing V-Dem's detailed data, including point estimates and confidence intervals, for accurate analysis of democratic trends.
V-Dems methodology is respected and provides valuable insights into the state of democracy in 2025. Although the data was published in January 2025, it does allude to potential controversies in the USA, some of which have come to pass. The fact that there is a second dedicated to the US, illustrates just how polarising and divisive Trumps Administration is proving to be less than 100 days since he took office.
It’s clear from the report that democracy is at a crossroads. More and more countries are going down an authoritarian path while less and less are espousing true liberal or democratic values. What this means for the world, who knows, but history is bound to repeat itself if we don’t learn the lessons from the past.
in a world where there are a number of conflicts all at once, the environment where these can all merge into one trans world conflict or a world war three if you will, cannot and must not be discounted. The environment is ripe for strongmen, far right autocrats to gain control and power in countries that would traditionally been considered strong democracies. The biggest and most concerning trend I’ve observed in recent years, is the emergence of a committed and determined far right movement right across the world but in particular Europe. This must be treated with caution and respect. To allow far right movements to thrive in parliaments is emblematic of a failure of leadership, trust in government and a failure in society.
But ignore them at our peril. They cannot and must not be ignored, as they are growing in support, spurred increasingly by the immigrant crisis fuelling the sort of toxic rhetoric that creates a tinderbox for chaos and destabilisation.
The systematic purposeful dismantling by the US of decades old institutions, is further evidence that the world is dangerously treading a path that it will regret in years to come.
Democracy even in good times is a fragile thing, however with it countries thrive, become wealthier and their citizens become happier, healthier, more productive and prosperous. In sum, countries are better when democracy is working and allowed to grow. No political system is perfect, there is a tendency of countries with very large populations to embrace authoritarian regimes and autocratic forms of government like China, Russia, India just being 3 examples. Maybe it’s in theses countries DNA to have an authoritarian bent while others, mostly European tend to have more democratic and open democratic systems.
When you look at former soviet and iron curtain countries like Slovakia and Albania and Belarus, Romania and Croatia, it takes at least one full generation to emerge from the shackles of communism and fully embrace democracy. Some are better then others at it and there is no doubt that the EU has been instrumental in fostering democracy in these countries, but the work is never complete, true democracy must always be maintained and nurtured otherwise it is prone to breaking.
The world at large has the most consequential decisions to ever make and that is whether to defend and fight for democracy or fall under the throes of authoritarianism and misery.
only the citizens of the world can determine this. And we must whatever it takes, save and preserve democracy and democratic values so that the world can continue to thrive and generations yet to be born, get a life worth living.
Stephen Walsh.