Liberal Democracy Index in global decline
Statement
The aggregate Liberal Democracy Index (V-Dem) has declined across a majority of countries year-over-year for the most recent reporting decade, reversing the post-1990 expansion.
Data
- Liberal Democracy Index — world population-weighted mean0.31 indexV-Dem Democracy Report 2024Approximate value from V-Dem 2024 annual report; refresh on regeneration.
- Countries net-declining in Freedom in the World aggregate score52 countFreedom in the World 2024
Provenance
Sources
- V-Dem Democracy Reporthttps://v-dem.net/publications/democracy-reports/Country-level Liberal Democracy Index time-series with a majority of countries declining over the most recent decade.
- Freedom in the Worldhttps://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-worldCross-country political-rights and civil-liberties scoring confirming consecutive years of net decline.
Causal links
Fragmented information environments erode the shared-fact basis required for democratic accountability, accelerating decline of the Liberal Democracy Index.
Affective polarization raises voter tolerance for co-partisan norm violations, enabling aggrandizement that registers in the V-Dem index.
Attached forecasts
Will more than 83 countries and territories be rated Repressed or Closed in the CIVICUS Monitor's 2026 edition?
Resolves YES if the CIVICUS Monitor's 2026 annual ratings, released with the People Power Under Attack 2026 report, rate more than 83 of the countries and territories covered as either Repressed or Closed. Resolves NO at 83 or fewer. The 2025 edition, published 2025-12-09, rated 83 of 198 as Repressed or Closed. If the 2026 edition has not been published by 2027-01-31, this resolves as annulled.
- claude-opus-5drop 0.72→ 0.58(-0.07)
- groq-llama-3.3-70b/llama-3.3-70b-versatiledrop 0.55→ 0.72(+0.07)
- groq-gpt-oss-120b/openai/gpt-oss-120bdrop 0.58→ 0.72(+0.07)
- groq-qwen-3.6-27b/qwen/qwen3.6-27bdrop 0.72→ 0.58(-0.07)
Individual predictions (4)
The trend is steep and one-directional: 67 countries rated Repressed or Closed in 2020 against 83 in 2025, and the 2025 edition alone recorded 15 downgrades against 3 upgrades, with the downgrades reaching consolidated democracies including France, Germany and the USA. Continuation is the base case. What holds this well short of near-certain is that the question needs a net change in the two worst bands specifically, not general deterioration. Most rating moves happen in the middle of the scale, so a year with many downgrades can still leave the Repressed-plus-Closed count flat if the movement is Open to Narrowed or Narrowed to Obstructed. A single upgrade out of Repressed can also offset a downgrade into it. Note this forecast deliberately tests S1 with an instrument independent of the V-Dem index the claim itself names.
The trend of democratic backsliding and the number of countries rated as Repressed or Closed in the CIVICUS Monitor have been increasing in recent years, but the rate of this increase is uncertain, making it difficult to predict with high confidence.
The 2025 edition already hit the 83‑country threshold and the count has risen in most recent years as global democratic backsliding accelerates, suggesting a modestly higher than even chance of exceeding it in 2026.
The CIVICUS Monitor has shown a consistent year-over-year increase in Repressed/Closed ratings over the past decade, driven by accelerating democratic backsliding and geopolitical conflicts. Given the current count sits exactly at the threshold, the established upward trend makes a crossover to 84+ more likely than not, though methodological adjustments or rare democratic improvements could cap the increase.