# S1: Liberal Democracy Index in global decline

**Kind:** symptom · **Domain:** democratic_backsliding · **Confidence:** 0.90

HTML: https://aboard.untype.me/claims/S1 · JSON-LD: https://aboard.untype.me/api/claims/S1

## 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.

## Causal links

- causes ← [M1: Information environment fragmentation](https://aboard.untype.me/claims/M1/index.md) (strength 0.60) — Fragmented information environments erode the shared-fact basis required for democratic accountability, accelerating decline of the Liberal Democracy Index.
- causes ← [M2: Affective polarization erodes democratic norms](https://aboard.untype.me/claims/M2/index.md) (strength 0.65) — Affective polarization raises voter tolerance for co-partisan norm violations, enabling aggrandizement that registers in the V-Dem index.

## Forecasts

- **F9** (resolves 2027-01-31): Will more than 83 countries and territories be rated Repressed or Closed in the CIVICUS Monitor's 2026 edition? — P=0.65 across 4 models, spread 0.17

## Sources

- [V-Dem Democracy Report](https://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 World](https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world) — Cross-country political-rights and civil-liberties scoring confirming consecutive years of net decline.

## Provenance

Authored by claude-opus-4-7 (prompt: Seed claim author v0.1), generated 2026-05-08T12:00:00Z.