{"chart":{"title":"Government Effectiveness Index vs. Electoral Democracy Index","subtitle":"The government effectiveness index captures perceptions of the quality of public services, the civil service, and policy formulation and implementation (positive values mean higher effectiveness). The electoral democracy index is by V-Dem, based on expert estimates, and ranges from 0 to 1 (most democratic).","citation":"V-Dem (2026)","originalChartUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/government-effectiveness-vs-electoral-democracy-index","selection":[]},"columns":{"Electoral democracy index (central estimate)":{"titleShort":"Electoral democracy index","titleLong":"Electoral democracy index - V-Dem","descriptionShort":"Central estimate of the extent to which political leaders are elected under comprehensive suffrage in free and fair elections, and freedoms of association and expression are guaranteed.","descriptionKey":"- This index, produced by Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), is useful if you are interested in big and small differences in democracy, want scores for almost all countries, and prefer a narrow understanding of democracy. For data that focuses on big differences in political systems or has a broad understanding of democracy, other sources will be more useful. You can explore these alternatives in our [Key Democracy Charts](https://ourworldindata.org/democracy#all-charts) and [Democracy Data Explorer](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/democracy?Dataset=Varieties+of+Democracy&Metric=Electoral+democracy&Sub-metric=Main+index&country=ARG~AUS~BWA~CHN~OWID_WRL).\n- It takes a narrow view of democracy by focusing on electoral political institutions: broad voting rights and free, fair, and meaningful elections.\n- The index is based mainly on assessments by V-Dem's country experts. It also uses some factual information coded by its own researchers.\n- It is made up of five sub-indices: [elected officials](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/elected-political-leaders-index), [free and fair elections](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/free-and-fair-elections-index), [freedom of expression](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-index), [freedom of association](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-association-index), and the [share of adult citizens who have the right to vote](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/suffrage).\n- V-Dem covers many more countries since 1900, which affects regional averages.\n- We provide two kinds of regional averages: **country averages** and **population-weighted averages**. Country averages weigh each country equally and give a sense of how the typical country is doing. Population-weighted averages weigh countries with larger populations more and therefore better reflect the average person's experience.","descriptionProcessing":"### Region aggregates\nThe default regional aggregates (including values for the World) have been estimated by averaging the country values. These are only estimated when data for most countries and populations is available (i.e. 70% for most continents). We have used the list of countries in 1900 as a reference.\n\nIn addition, regional aggregates with names like \"Region (population-weighted)\" (including values for World) have been estimated by averaging the country values weighted by population. The population values are from the UN WPP 2024 revision dataset. These are only estimated when 70% of people in region have data for the given year.\n\n### Data imputation\nWe expand the years covered by V-Dem further: To expand the time coverage of today's countries and include more of the period when they were still non-sovereign territories, we identified the historical entity they were a part of and used that regime's data whenever available\n\nFor example, V-Dem only provides regime data since Bangladesh's independence in 1971. There is, however, regime data for Pakistan and the colony of India, both of which the current territory of Bangladesh was a part. We, therefore, use the regime data of Pakistan for Bangladesh from 1947 to 1970, and the regime data of India from 1789 to 1946. We did so for all countries with a past or current population of more than one million.\n\nFor more details on the imputation methodology and which countries are affected, refer to [this file](https://github.com/owid/etl/blob/master/etl/steps/data/garden/democracy/2026-03-17/vdem/vdem.countries_impute.yml).","unit":"","timespan":"1789-2025","type":"Numeric","owidVariableId":1209753,"shortName":"electdem_vdem__estimate_best","lastUpdated":"2026-03-17","nextUpdate":"2027-03-17","citationShort":"V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data","citationLong":"V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data. “Electoral democracy index – V-Dem” [dataset]. V-Dem, “Democracy report v16” [original data].","fullMetadata":"https://api.ourworldindata.org/v1/indicators/1209753.metadata.json"},"Government effectiveness":{"titleShort":"Government Effectiveness Index","titleLong":"Government Effectiveness Index","descriptionShort":"Denotes perceptions of the quality of public services, the civil service, and policy formulation and implementation (positive values mean higher effectiveness) based on the data from the World Governance Indicators.","descriptionProcessing":"### Data imputation\nWe expand the years covered by V-Dem further: To expand the time coverage of today's countries and include more of the period when they were still non-sovereign territories, we identified the historical entity they were a part of and used that regime's data whenever available\n\nFor example, V-Dem only provides regime data since Bangladesh's independence in 1971. There is, however, regime data for Pakistan and the colony of India, both of which the current territory of Bangladesh was a part. We, therefore, use the regime data of Pakistan for Bangladesh from 1947 to 1970, and the regime data of India from 1789 to 1946. We did so for all countries with a past or current population of more than one million.\n\nFor more details on the imputation methodology and which countries are affected, refer to [this file](https://github.com/owid/etl/blob/master/etl/steps/data/garden/democracy/2026-03-17/vdem/vdem.countries_impute.yml).","unit":"","timespan":"1996-2024","type":"Numeric","owidVariableId":1210046,"shortName":"goveffective_vdem_wbgi","lastUpdated":"2026-03-17","nextUpdate":"2027-03-17","citationShort":"V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data","citationLong":"V-Dem (2026) – processed by Our World in Data. “Government Effectiveness Index” [dataset]. V-Dem, “Democracy report v16” [original data].","fullMetadata":"https://api.ourworldindata.org/v1/indicators/1210046.metadata.json"},"World region according to OWID":{"titleShort":"World region according to OWID","titleLong":"World region according to OWID","descriptionShort":"Regions defined by Our World in Data, which are used in OWID charts and maps.","unit":"","timespan":"2023-2023","type":"Continent","owidVariableId":900801,"shortName":"owid_region","lastUpdated":"2023-01-01","citationShort":"Our World in Data","citationLong":"Our World in Data. “World region according to OWID” [dataset]. Our World in Data, “Regions” [original data].","fullMetadata":"https://api.ourworldindata.org/v1/indicators/900801.metadata.json"}},"dateDownloaded":"2026-10-31"}