Democracy statistics show a world divided between democratic and autocratic systems, with major differences in population exposure, political rights, and institutional performance. The figures below draw on International IDEA’s 2024 global measures and the V-Dem Democracy Report 2024, with measurement periods stated for each source.
Contents
- How democracy is measured
- The global balance of democracy and autocracy
- Democratization and autocratization
- Rights, elections, and democratic performance
- What the long-run indexes show
- Country rankings and scores
How democracy is measured
International comparisons depend on the dataset and its measurement design. The Global State of Democracy (GSoD) report covers 173 countries, while its data span 1975–2023. The GSoD Indices use 165 indicators and organize the results into four core categories: Representation, Rights, Rule of Law, and Participation. These figures come from the International IDEA Global State of Democracy 2024 and the International IDEA GSoD Codebook v8 2024.
International IDEA also maintains a Democracy Tracker that monitors democracy and human-rights developments in 173 countries on a monthly basis. Its Perceptions of Democracy Survey covered 19 countries. These products measure different things: an index can summarize institutional conditions, a tracker can record developments over time, and a perception survey can describe how people view democracy. They should not be treated as interchangeable measures.
V-Dem provides a longer historical comparison. Version 14 of the V-Dem dataset covers 202 countries from 1789 to 2023 and contains 31 million data points. Since 2016, the dataset has recorded 360,000 downloads and users have created 23 million graphs with V-Dem’s online tools. These usage figures describe the reach of the dataset, not the quality or direction of democracy itself. (V-Dem Democracy Report 2024.)
The V-Dem project also reports how its expert network is composed. More than 63% of the data was provided by local experts born in or residing in the country they code. The project had more than 4,200 country experts, 134 country coordinators, 18 regional managers, 23 project managers, and five principal investigators. Among expert coders, 73% had a PhD, 73% were male and 27% were female, and the mean age was 47. Coders had spent an average of 39 years in the country coded and were born in 185 different countries. (V-Dem Democracy Report 2024.)
The global balance of democracy and autocracy
The V-Dem Democracy Report 2024 describes a world almost evenly divided by the number of countries: 91 democracies and 88 autocracies. The population balance is much less even. In 2023, 71% of the world’s population—5.7 billion people—lived in autocracies. Ten years earlier, the corresponding share was 48%.
Electoral autocracies alone accounted for 44% of the world’s population, or 3.5 billion people. Liberal and electoral democracies together accounted for 29%, or 2.3 billion people. The contrast matters because country counts and population counts answer different questions. A near-even split in the number of countries can coexist with a large majority of people living under autocratic systems.
The following figures summarize the population-based picture reported by V-Dem for 2023:
| Political system grouping | Share of world population | Approximate population |
|---|---|---|
| All autocracies | 71% | 5.7 billion |
| Electoral autocracies | 44% | 3.5 billion |
| Liberal and electoral democracies | 29% | 2.3 billion |
These groupings are reported categories in the V-Dem Democracy Report 2024. The figures are not forecasts, and they should not be added together as if each row were a separate, mutually exclusive layer: electoral autocracies are included within autocracies, while liberal and electoral democracies are presented together as a democratic grouping.
Democratization and autocratization
V-Dem identified 18 countries in ongoing episodes of democratization in 2023. Those countries held about 400 million people, equal to 5% of the world’s population. Brazil alone accounted for 216 million inhabitants, more than half of the people living in the democratizing countries identified in that report.
At the same time, 42 countries were in ongoing episodes of autocratization. Of those, 28 had been democracies at the start of their episodes, but only about half—15 countries—remained democracies in 2023. The report classifies 23 of the 42 autocratizing episodes as stand-alone processes and 19 as “bell-turns.”
The pattern among the strongest cases is also notable. Eight of the top 10 stand-alone autocratizers were liberal or electoral democracies at the start of their episodes. Eight of the top 10 bell-turn autocratizers had been democracies at some point after democratization. Embodied autonomy, described in the report as “Emb autonomy,” was weakening in 22 of the 42 autocratizing countries.
The report also counts cases that came close to crossing a threshold without being classified as ongoing episodes. There were 25 near misses of autocratization and nine near misses of democratization. These figures are classifications for 2023 in the V-Dem Democracy Report 2024, not predictions about what those countries will do next.
Rights, elections, and democratic performance
The V-Dem Democracy Report 2024 records deterioration across several specific dimensions of democracy in 2023. Freedom of expression was worsening in 35 countries. Clean elections were deteriorating in 23 countries and improving in 12. Freedom of association was restricted in 20 countries while expanding in only three.
Election-year conditions were also uneven. Sixty countries were holding national elections in 2024, according to the report’s forward-looking count. Of those 60 countries, 31 were worsening on democracy levels and only three were improving. This is an election-holding snapshot, not a claim that all elections in those countries had the same quality or outcome.
Several historical benchmarks put the recent level in context. The average person in the world experienced democracy levels comparable to 1985. The country-based average was comparable to 1998, the territory-weighted average to 1987, and the economy-weighted level had already fallen below the level recorded for 1973. These comparisons use different weighting methods, so they describe different views of the same global distribution rather than four interchangeable dates.
The distinction between these measures is important for reading democracy statistics. A population-weighted result emphasizes the experience of people; a country-based average gives each country a place in the average; a territory-weighted result emphasizes land area; and an economy-weighted result emphasizes economic scale. The reported benchmark years therefore should be read as separate indicators of democratic performance.
Country rankings and scores
International IDEA’s Country Rankings 2024 provide a comparative score and a possible ranking range. The scores below are reported as country scores, and the ranking ranges show the uncertainty or range attached to each position in that source.
| Country | Rank | Score | Possible ranking range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Denmark | 1 | 0.959 | 1–5 |
| Switzerland | 2 | 0.950 | 1–5 |
| Germany | 3 | 0.949 | 1–5 |
| Luxembourg | 4 | 0.927 | 1–7 |
| Belgium | 5 | 0.925 | 1–7 |
| Finland | 6 | 0.894 | 4–10 |
| Czechia | 7 | 0.891 | 4–10 |
| Ireland | 8 | 0.874 | 6–12 |
| Japan | 9 | 0.871 | 6–15 |
| Sweden | 10 | 0.856 | 6–16 |
Denmark had the highest listed score at 0.959, followed by Switzerland at 0.950 and Germany at 0.949. The top 10 also included Luxembourg, Belgium, Finland, Czechia, Ireland, Japan, and Sweden. The possible ranges show why a rank should not always be read as a precise, immovable ordering: Denmark’s range was 1–5, while Sweden’s was 6–16.
The United Kingdom ranked 35th with a country score of 0.715 and a possible ranking range of 27–40. Nearby or otherwise useful comparison points included France at 30th with 0.728 and a 25–38 range, the United States at 34th with 0.721 and a 26–39 range, and Canada at 17th with 0.763 and a 16–35 range.
European entries outside the first 10 included Austria, ranked 17th with a score of 0.802 and an 11–27 range; the Netherlands, ranked 15th with 0.819 and a 9–25 range; Italy, ranked 14th with 0.820 and a 9–25 range; Spain, ranked 12th with 0.830 and an 8–24 range; Norway, ranked 23rd with 0.792 and an 11–27 range; and Poland, ranked 56th with 0.652 and a 48–62 range.
The wider comparison set included Australia in 11th place with 0.840 and an 8–23 range; New Zealand in 16th with 0.810 and a 10–27 range; Costa Rica in 20th with 0.798 and an 11–27 range; Uruguay in 26th with 0.766 and a 16–34 range; Taiwan in 24th with 0.786 and a 12–29 range; and Chile in 32nd with 0.723 and a 25–38 range.
Other reported scores were South Africa in 54th place at 0.665, with a 46–59 range; Brazil in 63rd at 0.564, with a 50–81 range; Indonesia in 65th at 0.607, with a 58–77 range; Mexico in 69th at 0.588, with a 60–81 range; and India in 71st at 0.584, with a 60–84 range. These are International IDEA Country Rankings 2024 results. They are country-level comparisons for that edition and should not be treated as a complete description of every democratic institution or as a forecast of future scores.