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Data

Liberal democracy index

(best estimate, aggregate: average)
See all data and research on:
Democracy

What you should know about this indicator

Question: To what extent is the ideal of liberal democracy achieved?

Clarification: The liberal principle of democracy emphasizes the importance of protecting individual and minority rights against the tyranny of the state and the tyranny of the majority. The liberal model takes a "negative" view of political power insofar as it judges the quality of democracy by the limits placed on government. This is achieved by constitutionally protected civil liberties, strong rule of law, an independent judiciary, and effective checks and balances that, together, limit the exercise of executive power. To make this a measure of liberal democracy, the index also takes the level of electoral democracy into account.

Scale: Interval, from low to high (0-1).

Indicator name: v2x_libdem

Liberal democracy index
(best estimate, aggregate: average)
Best estimate of the extent of suffrage, the freedom and fairness of elections, freedoms of association and expression, individual and minority rights, equality before the law, and executive constraints.
Source
V-Dem (2024) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
March 7, 2024
Next expected update
March 2025
Date range
1789–2023

Related research and writing

Featured image for how democratic rights differ around the world. Stylized bar chart with their height indicating the degree of democratic rights in each country.

People around the world have gained democratic rights, but some have many more rights than others

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Does democracy lead to better health?

Esteban Ortiz-Ospina

Explore charts that include this data

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project publishes data and research on democracy and human rights.

It acknowledges that democracy can be characterized differently and measures electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian characterizations of democracy.

The project relies on evaluations by around 3,500 country experts and supplementary work by its researchers to assess political institutions and the protection of rights.

The project is managed by the V-Dem Institute, based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

This snapshot contains all 500 V-Dem indicators and 245 indices + 57 other indicators from other data sources.

Retrieved on
March 18, 2024
Retrieved from
http://v-dem.net/vdemds.html
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Fabio Angiolillo, Michael Bernhard, Cecilia Borella, Agnes Cornell, M. Steven Fish, Linnea Fox, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, Ana Good God, Sandra Grahn, Allen Hicken, Katrin Kinzelbach, Joshua Krusell, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Natalia Natsika, Anja Neundorf, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Josefine Pernes, Oskar Rydén, Johannes von Römer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, Steven Wilson and Daniel Ziblatt. 2024. "V-Dem Country-Year Dataset v14" Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/mcwt-fr58;
Pemstein, Daniel, Kyle L. Marquardt, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Juraj Medzihorsky, Joshua Krusell, Farhad Miri, and Johannes von Römer. 2024. “The V-Dem Measurement Model: Latent Variable Analysis for Cross-National and Cross-Temporal Expert-Coded Data”. V-Dem Working Paper No. 21. 9th edition. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute

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The regional aggregates (including values for the World) have been estimated by averaging the country values.

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Liberal democracy index”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Lucas Rodés-Guirao and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2013) - “Democracy”. Data adapted from V-Dem. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-liberal-democracy-index-popw-vdem [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

V-Dem (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

V-Dem (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “Liberal democracy index – (best estimate, aggregate: average)” [dataset]. V-Dem, “V-Dem Country-Year (Full + Others) v14” [original data]. Retrieved December 11, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-liberal-democracy-index-popw-vdem