This collection archives datasets that measure democracy in use in the scholarly literature.
[Democracy]
| Dataset | Measure | Measure Type | Downloadable | Note | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Anckar-Fredriksson dataset of political regime | democracy | dichotomous | Yes | 1800-2016 | |
| The Acemoglu, Naidu, Restrepo, and Robinson dataset | democracy | dichotomous | No | the rules are not entirely transparent, and some cases in the original dataset have been hand-coded. | 1960-2010 |
| The Arat measure of democracy | Democracy and human rights in developing countries | continuous | No | Can't aceess to the original data | 1948-1982 |
| The Bowman, Lehoucq, and Mahoney index of democracy for Central America | Democracy | trichotomous | Yes | 1900-2000 | |
| The Boix-Miller-Rosato dichotomous coding of democracy, 1800-2015, version 3.0 | democracy,female suffrage | dichotomous | Yes | 1800-2015 | |
| The Bollen measure of democracy | Democracy index. Ranges from 0 to 100. | No | The original dataset is not available.Only available via the Pemstein, Meserve, and Melton (2013) replication data. | 1950-1980 | |
| Renske Doorenspleet’s Democracy Dataset | country-year version of the democracy classification(reassessing the Three Waves of Democratization) | dichotomous | No | 1800-1994 | |
| The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index | EIU democracy index | continuous | No | The original data has to be manually extracted from the tables in the EIU’s pdf report on the index. | 2006-2021 |
| Freedom House “Freedom in the World” data | Democracy Status | ordinal | Yes | ||
| Axel Hadenius’ Index of Democracy | Democracy Index | continuous | No | Only available via the Pemstein, Meserve, and Melton (2013) replication data | 1988 |
| Political Instability Task Force democracy indicator | democracy indicator | dichotomous | No | Constructed score on the basis of Polity data. | 1789-2020 |
| Suport Vector Machine Democracy Index by Grundler and Krieger | Democracy Index | continuous | Yes | 1919-2019 | |
| The Unified Democracy Scores | Democracy | continuous | Yes | 1946-2012 | |
| The Berteslmann Index of Political transformation | Democracy Status | continuous | Yes | 2004-2020 | |
| The Bernhard, Nordstrom & Reenock Event History Coding of Democratic Breakdowns | Event | dichotomous | Yes | 1913-2005 |
[Electoral, governance]
| Dataset | Measure | Measure Type | Downloadable | Note | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freedom House “Electoral Democracies” List | electoral | dichotomous | Yes | 1990-now | |
| The Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy | Electoral Democracy index | ordinal | Yes | 1789-2021 | |
| The Rulers, Elections, and Irregular Governance (REIGN) dataset, regime characteristics worksheet. | regime,governance | dichotomous | Yes | ||
| The World Governance Indicators “Voice and Accountability” Index | governance | continuous | Yes |
[Regime,autocracy]
| Dataset | Measure | Measure Type | Downloadable | Note | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Geddes Wright and Frantz Autocratic Regimes dataset | regime, autocracy | dichotomous | Yes | ||
| The Steffen Kailitz Dataset of Authoritarian Regime Types | Regime | dichotomous | No | ||
| Autocracies of the World, 1950-2012 | regime | dichotomous | yes | 1950-2012 | |
| Mainwaring, Brinks, and Perez Linan’s democracy measure for Latin America | regime | NO | 1900-2007 | ||
| Munck Index of Democracy | Democracy Index | continuous | NO | Only available via the Pemstein, Meserve, and Melton (2013) replication data. | 1960-2005 |
| The Democracy and Dictatorship Dataset (DD/PACL/ACLP/CGV) | democracy,regime | dichotomous | yes | 1950-2020 | |
| The Political Institutions and Political Events (PIPE) dataset | democracy,regime | dichotomous | yes | 1788-2008 | |
| polity IV | Regime,Authority | ordinal | yes | 1800-2018 | |
| The Political Regime Change (PRC) dataset | regime | trichotomous | NO | 1747-1998 | |
| Milan Svolik’s Regime Dataset | regime | dichotomous | Yes | 1946-2008 |
The V-Dem Institute, led by Professor Staffan I. Lindberg, is an independent research institute and the Headquarters of the V-Dem project. The institute is based at the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The Institute is in charge of the operations relating to the data collection and the V-Dem data, including the Country Expert data collection, data curation and making the data available to the users.
V-Dem Methodology:
V-Dem’s approach to understanding democratization encompasses multiple core principles: electoral, liberal, majoritarian, consensual, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian. Each Principle is represented by a separate index, and each is regarded as a separate outcome in the proposed study.
Bayesian Item-Response Theory (IRT):
It treats experts’ ordinal ratings as imperfect reflections of interval-level latent concepts, and allows for the possibility that experts have different thresholds for their ratings, estimates those thresholds from patterns in the data, and adjusts latent trait estimates accordingly.
2. Polity5: Regime Authority Characteristics and Transitions Datasets
Polity5 Project, Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2018, annual, cross-national, time-series and polity-case formats coding democratic and autocratic "patterns of authority" and regime changes in all independent countries with total population greater than 500,000 in 2018 (167 countries in 2018). Polity5 refined data covers mainly the period, 1946-2018; data for years 1800-1945 are Polity IV values.
Codebook: pdf
GWF Autocratic Regimes
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Codebook: pdf
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Regimes cases, codebook tables and TSCS data: Excel
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Regime Cases: Stata
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Transform the list of cases into TSCS data: Stata
GWF All Political Regimes
4.Lexicial Index of Electoral Democracy
The authors operationalize electoral democracy as a series of necessary-and-sufficient conditions arrayed in an ordinal scale. The resulting Lexical index of electoral democracy (LIED), based partly on new data, covers all independent countries of the world from 1800 to 2013. It incorporates binary coding of its sub-components, which are aggregated into an ordinal scale using a cumulative logic. In this fashion, they arrive at an index that performs a classificatory function, each level identifies a unique and theoretically meaningful regime type, as well as a discriminating function.
- Country codes (for V-Dem included and small corrections made): Excel
ACLP: Data set used in the book Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990 (Cambridge 2000). Coverage: 135 countries, from 1950 or year of independence to 1990.
DD: Classification of political regimes as democracy and dictatorship. Classification of democracies as parliamentary, semi-presidential (mixed) and presidential. Classification of dictatorships as military, civilian and royal. Coverage: 202 countries, from 1946 or year of independence to 2008.
PPD: Data set used in the book Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy (Cambridge 2007) and in the article “Presidentialism, Electoral Identifiability, and Budget Balances in Democratic Systems” (APSR 2006) . Coverage: 199 countries, from 1946 or year of independence to 2002.
6. The Worldwide Governance Indicators
The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project reports aggregate and individual governance indicators for over 200 countries and territories over the period 1996–2020, for six dimensions of governance: Voice and Accountability; Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism; Government; Effectiveness; Regulatory Quality; Rule of Law; Control of Corruption.These aggregate indicators combine the views of a large number of enterprise, citizen and expert survey respondents in industrial and developing countries. They are based on over 30 individual data sources produced by a variety of survey institutes, think tanks, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and private sector firms.
7. The Correlates of War Project
This data set contains the list of states in the international system as updated and distributed by the Correlates of War Project. These data sets identify states, their standard Correlates of War "country code" or state number (used throughout the Correlates of War project data sets), state abbreviations, and dates of membership as states and major powers in the international system. Version 2016 extends the temporal domain of the collection through December 2016. The Correlates of War project includes a state in the international system from 1816-2016 for the following criteria. Prior to 1920, the entity must have had a population greater than 500,000 and have had diplomatic missions at or above the rank of charge d’affaires with Britain and France. After 1920, the entity must be a member of the League of Nations or the United Nations, or have a population greater than 500,000 and receive diplomatic missions from two major powers.
- Codebook: pdf
- States2016 (provides entry and exit dates of states, country codes, and abbreviations): csv
- Majors2016 (provides the entry and exit dates for states to be designated as major powers): csv
- System2016 (gives the composition of the state system year by year, providing a blank country-year dataset ): csv
8.Acemoglu, Naidu, Restrepo and Robinson's Dataset
We construct an annual panel that comprises 175 countries from 1960 to 2010, though not all variables are available for the entire sample. In order to address the issue of measurement error in democracy indices, we create a consolidated and dichotomous measure of democracy. Following Papaioannou and Siourounis (2008), our index combines information from several datasets, including Freedom House and Polity IV, and only considers a country as democratic when several sources classify it as such.
9. Boix-Miller-Rosato Dichotomous Coding of Democracy, 1800-2020
This data set provides a dichotomous coding of democracy for every country in the world (222 total) from 1800 to 2020. It updates the original version of our data, which ended in 2007. This version also includes a measure of democracy that requires a level of female suffrage. Please cite the following publication when using the data: Carles Boix, Michael K. Miller, and Sebastian Rosato. 2013. "A Complete Data Set of Political Regimes, 1800-2007." Comparative Political Studies 46(12): 1523-54. (2022-01-03)
10. Freedom House - Freedom in the World 2022
Freedom in the World is produced each year by a team of in-house and external analysts and expert advisers from the academic, think tank, and human rights communities. The 2022 edition involved 128 analysts, and nearly 50 advisers. The analysts, who prepare the draft reports and scores, use a broad range of sources, including news articles, academic analyses, reports from nongovernmental organizations, individual professional contacts, and on-the-ground research. The analysts score countries and territories based on the conditions and events within their borders during the coverage period. Although an element of subjectivity is unavoidable in such an enterprise, the ratings process emphasizes methodological consistency, intellectual rigor, and balanced and unbiased judgments.