Political regime
What you should know about this indicator
- This indicator distinguishes between (electoral) democracies (score 1) and non-democracies (score 0).
- Democracies are political systems in which political leaders are selected under broad suffrage in free and fair elections.
Related research and writing
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
Old data for some countries has been imputed based on former countries:
- Colombia (1821 - 1830): Great Colombia (former)
- Costa Rica (1824 - 1837): Federal Republic of Central America (former)
- Czechia (1918 - 1992): Czechoslovakia
- Ecuador (1821 - 1829): Great Colombia (former)
- El Salvador (1824 - 1838): Federal Republic of Central America (former)
- Guatemala (1824 - 1838): Federal Republic of Central America (former)
- Honduras (1824 - 1838): Federal Republic of Central America (former)
- Nicaragua (1824 - 1837): Federal Republic of Central America (former)
- North Korea (1800 - 1910): Korea (former)
- Panama (1821 - 1830): Great Colombia (former)
- Slovakia (1918 - 1992): Czechoslovakia
- South Korea (1800 - 1910): Korea (former)
- Venezuela (1821 - 1829): Great Colombia (former)
- Russia (1922 - 1991): USSR
- Ethiopia (1952 - 1992): Ethiopia (former)
- Eritrea (1952 - 1992): Ethiopia (former)
- Pakistan (1947 - 1971): Pakistan (former)
- Bangladesh (1947 - 1970): Pakistan (former)
Reuse this work
- All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
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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: Political regime”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Lucas Rodés-Guirao and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2013) - “Democracy”. Data adapted from Boix-Miller-Rosato. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/political-regime-bmr [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:
Boix-Miller-Rosato (2022) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Full citation
Boix-Miller-Rosato (2022) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Political regime” [dataset]. Boix-Miller-Rosato, “Boix-Miller-Rosato (BMR) dichotomous coding of democracy (1800-2020) 4” [original data]. Retrieved November 5, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/political-regime-bmr