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Polyarchy

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Democracy

What you should know about this indicator

  • In non-electoral autocracies, citizens do not have the right to elect the chief executive or the legislature.
  • In one-party autocracies, some citizens have the right to choose the chief executive or the legislature, but only have one choice.
  • Multiparty autocracies without an elected executive are otherwise one-party autocracies, but the chief executive of the government is not elected even if citizens have more than one choice in legislative elections.
  • Multiparty autocracies are one-party autocracies in which citizens have more than one choice, though election outcome is certain.
  • In exclusive democracies, citizens have the right to choose the chief executive and the legislature in multi-party, uncertain elections, but suffrage is restricted.
  • Male democracies are exclusive democracies that have comprehensive suffrage for men.
  • Electoral democracies are male democracies that also have comprehensive suffrage for women.
  • Polyarchies are electoral democracies that also protect the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association.

This index, LIED+, add an extra layer to the upper-end of LIED in the form of political liberties. This is done to distinguish between electoral democracies and polyarchies. The meaning of the scores from 0 to 5 are identical to LIED, whereas 6 and 7 refer to the following configurations of indicator values:

6: legislative_elections=1 & multi-party_legislative_elections=1 & executive_elections=1 & competitive_elections=1 & male_suffrage=1 & female_suffrage=1 & political_liberties=0 (regime type: electoral democracies)

7: legislative_elections=1 & multi-party_legislative_elections=1 & executive_elections=1 & competitive_elections=1 & male_suffrage=1 & female_suffrage=1 & political_liberties=1 (regime type: polyarchies)

Equivalent indicator: lexical_index_plus

Polyarchy
Identifies the political regime of a country. It distinguishes between non-electoral autocracies (score 0), one-party autocracies (score 1), multi-party autocracies without elected executive (score 2), multi-party autocracies (score 3), exclusive democracies (score 4), male democracies (score 5), electoral democracies (score 6), and polyarchies (score 7).
Source
Skaaning et al. (2023) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 9, 2024
Next expected update
May 2025
Date range
1789–2022

Related research and writing

Featured image for article on how researchers measure democracy. Four stylized world maps in different colors, reflecting varying data sources.

Democracy data: how sources differ and when to use which one

Bastian Herre

Explore charts that include this data

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

LIED is the most comprehensive dataset on democracy in terms of country-years. It covers all independent countries and most semi-sovereign polities and overseas colonies, protectorates, etc. within the 1789 to 2020 timespan. Scores have also been assigned to the units in the case of short-term foreign occupation. Scores for each indicator reflect the status of a country on the last day of the calendar year (31 December) and are not intended to reflect the mean value of an indicator across the previous 364 days. Coding decisions are based on country-specific sources.

All original coding has been done by Svend-Erik Skaaning. Svend-Erik Skaaning has developed the conceptual distinctions and cumulative logic associated with the lexical index in collaboration with John Gerring. The distinctions regarding modes of democratic transition and breakdown have been developed by Svend-Erik Skaaning, 1 who has also developed the turnover variables. Henrikas Bartusevicius was in charge of empirical analyses and the coding linked to the inter-coder reliability test presented in the dataset paper (see below).

The dataset consists of 14 original indicators and two original indices. The LIED dataset offers indicators on whether legislative elections are on track (legislative_elections), whether (direct or indirect) executive elections are on track (executive_elections), whether multiple parties are able to run for legislative elections (multi-party_legislative_elections), whether there is universal male suffrage (male_suffrage), and whether there is universal female suffrage (female_suffrage),2 whether elections are genuinely contested (competitive_elections), whether political liberties in the form of freedom of expression, assembly, and association, are respected (political_liberties), whether countries experienced democratic transition in a given year (democratic_transition), the mode of democratic transition (transition_type), whether countries experienced democratic breakdown in a given year (democratic_breakdown), the mode of democratic breakdown (breakdown_type),whether elections led to a government turnover (turnover_event), and whether a period of competitive elections has been characterized by at least one government turnover (turnover_period). Finally, the data are used to construct two indices, i.e., the Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy (lexical_index) and an extended version called Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy+ (lexical_index_plus).

Retrieved on
May 9, 2024
Retrieved from
https://ps.au.dk/en/research/research-projects/dedere/datasets
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.
Skaaning, Svend-Erik, John Gerring and Henrikas Bartusevičius. 2015. A Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy. Comparative Political Studies 48(12):1491-1525.

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Notes on our processing step for this indicator

0: non-electoral autocracy 1: one-party autocracy 2: multi-party autocracy wihtout elected executive 3: multi-party autocracy 4: exclusive Democracy 5: male democracy 6: elecotral democracy 7: polyarchy

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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: Polyarchy”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Lucas Rodés-Guirao and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2013) - “Democracy”. Data adapted from Skaaning et al.. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/polyarchy-lexical [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:

Skaaning et al. (2023) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Skaaning et al. (2023) – processed by Our World in Data. “Polyarchy” [dataset]. Skaaning et al., “Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy (LIED) v6.5” [original data]. Retrieved November 22, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/polyarchy-lexical