Today is World #PeaceDay. How far have we come in our quest for a peaceful world?

Conflicts have become more common, but less deadly since World War II. But in recent years more people have died in conflicts than in prior decades.

A 🧵with some key charts: The number of conflicts involving at least one government has increased.

But conflicts between states have almost disappeared.

It is conflicts between governments and parts of their population that have become more common — especially those with foreign involvement.

Today is International Democracy Day. So let’s check in on the development and state of democracy in the world.

The world has become much more democratic over the last centuries. But some of this progress has recently been reversed.

A 🧵with some key charts: In the 19th century, there were few countries one could call democracies.

Today there are around 90 democracies, about half of all countries.

Would you like to learn more about democracy?

Try our new Democracy Data Explorer!

ourworldindata.org/explorers/demo…

It provides several hundred interactive visualizations from eight leading democracy datasets.

A 🧵about what it includes: Democracy data can be difficult to access and understand.

The Democracy Data Explorer therefore provides and explains data from eight datasets: RoW, V-Dem, the Lexical Index, Boix-Miller-Rosato, Polity, Freedom House, EIU and BTI.

In my new article for @OurWorldInData, I look at how old democracies are across the world.

In most countries, democracy is a recent achievement. Dictatorship is far from a distant memory:
ourworldindata.org/democracies-age To some young (and even older) people living in democracies, authoritarianism may seem like a long-forgotten part of their country’s history.

But this impression does not match people’s experiences across the world.

🚨New Dataset Alert!🚨

What economic ideologies do political leaders have around the world?

A 🧵 on what we learn from the Global Leader Ideology dataset (GLI) I have built over the last four years, and why it matters.

#polisciresearch #socsciresearch Social scientists have long studied — and often found — that leftist governments pursue different policies than rightist governments (read a recent summary here: bit.ly/3yNHzVn). But this research has mainly focused on OECD countries, neglecting other parts of the world.