Thread by @Kunkakom

V-DEM, potentially the most comprehensive measure on the state of democracy, has published a new report, and the results are staggering.
▶️Hungary is no longer considered a democracy
▶️India is close, too
▶️Now, the majority of people worldwide live in autocracies
(thread)

The report (v-dem.net/media/filer_pu…) is worth reading.

It is a prime example of how to communicate complex data on important questions:
Accessible language combined with intuitive graphs that help to convey clear messages.

I'll copy key graphs and phrases while reading along.

Assessing "the state of democracy" is hard because the concept is complex and controversial.
But even if conceptual questions were settled, collecting all necessary measures to assess how democratic a country is is a huge undertaking.

@vdeminstitute impresses me because they combine a massive data collection effort with sound and sophisticated conceptualization.
Altogether, V-DEM provides democracy scores 202 countries since 1789. 28,413,876 data points in total.

In short, VDEM uses expert judgments to measure a liberal democracy index, reflecting how institutions guarantee free and fair elections and how checks & balances and individual liberties are protected (along with others component of democratic quality)

▶️Democracy declined in 26 ­countries d­uring 2019, up from 18 in 2017
▶️*In the last year, we have lost 8 democracies*
▶️Now, we are left with 87 electoral and liberal democracies, which are home to 46% of the world­'s population

What we have seen in previous years is that authoritarian leaders slowly but steadily eroded pillars of a liberal and pluralistic society but they still maintained free and fair elections.
This has changed.

"A new and disturbing trend in this year’s data is that the quality of elections is now also deteriorating in many countries. After years of undercutting countervailing forces, rulers seem now to feel secure enough to attack the very core of democracy: free and fair elections."

"Over the last ten years, more nations have become characterized by autocratization than by democratization."

Importantly, large, visible and norms-shaping countries such as India and the US are moving away from democracy

"The number of electoral autocracies has almost doubled from 36 in 1972 to 67 today. For much of the period, this increase represented an improvement since countries which used to be closed dictatorships had opened up and became electoral regimes. " (cont)

"But over the last decade, the rise in electoral autocracies is mainly the result of democracies gradually breaking down. Seven of these became electoral autocracies over the last year from 2018 to 2019. This includes Hungary as the only EU Member State."

"The countries that have autocratized the most over the last 10 years are Hungary, Turkey, Poland, Serbia, Brazil and India."

"The autocratizing governments in these countries
first restricted the scope for media and civil society. Once they had gained sufficient control over the “watchdogs” in the media and civil society, they dared to begin eroding the quality of elections."

The authors also provide encouraging results as more and more citizens are resisting and are taking to the streets to protest for democracy.
But, altogether, V-DEM provides hard evidence for what many of us “feel to be true”:

democracy is in decline and autocracy is on the rise