This is my third annual commentary on the V-Dem Project’s annual democracy report, which provides data on democracy and autocracy in all nations and colonies of the world, from 1974 to the present. V-Dem is based in the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg, with a worldwide staff of over 3,000. In 2024 I showed V-Dem methods and emphasized that international organizations—not just nations—contribute to the rise and fall of democracy. One year prior, I introduced ways to explore the analysis and presented highlights from the 2023 report.
Fluctuations in Democracy
This year, I summarize the attention that V-Dem gives to the fluctuating levels of democracy in its 2025 report, hoping to find hints of future change. Overall, Figures 1 and 2 provide two global snapshots of the level of liberal democracy: Figure 1 shows the average level of democracy for as many as 172 countries, and Figure 2 shows the average level of democracy per person for all the countries of the world. (The grey areas give the confidence interval.)
In each case, levels of democracy rose until about 2010, as colonies gained independence, women gained rights, and elections expanded. For instance, Figure 1 reflects the 1990–1995 breakup of the Soviet Union into numerous independent nations—a big increase in democracy, at least for a while. But since 2010, elite authorities in and out of government have restricted free speech and ignored the popular will.
The V-Dem staff then divided nations into those with positive and negative experiences with democracy, as shown in Figures 3 and 4. This approach gives an overall picture that separates out the cases of democratization and autocratization, showing how each changed with time. Yearly cases of democratizing (dotted lines) can be compared with cases of autocratizing (solid red lines).
Figure 3 shows more and more countries gaining in levels of democracy—up to 71 in 1993, then declining to 19 in 2024—while the number of autocratizing countries went from zero in 1984 up to 48 countries in 2020. (Years where levels of democracy did not change are not shown.) Figure 4 shows that, in 2024, 38 percent of the world population experienced increasing autocracy while only 6 percent gained in democracy. The years from 2009 to 2014 were the time in which rising autocracy sped past cases of expanding democracy, as shown on both Figure 3 and Figure 4.
Next, V-Dem researchers turned to analyzing the experience of individual nations within broad categories. Researchers divided the 172 nations into three categories: democratizing, autocratizing, and countries with little change (not shown). Looking back from 2024 to 2004, Figures 5 and 7 show two patterns of democratizing, while Figures 6 and 9 show two patterns of autocratizing. (Nine or 10 countries are shown for each pattern.) Figure 5 shows the nine countries that had steady growth un democracy up to 2024—mostly small countries that avoided big-power pressures.
Figure 6 shows the top 10 cases that became increasingly autocratic up to 2024. Figure 6 raises important questions: What were the country-by-country experiences that created such a dramatic decline in democracy? Was it internal conflicts? Was it global pressures? There are no simple answers, but V-Dem calculated that, of the 10 countries in Figure 6, Hungary had the most rapid increase in autocracy while Mexico had the slowest rise in autocracy.
V-Dem analysis identifies two more patterns of national experience: so-called “U-Turn Democratization,” in which countries rebounded from autocratization (Figure 7), and “Bell-Turn Autocratization” (Figure 8), in which countries that were democratizing shifted toward autocracy. The latter may also be called “failed democratization.”
V- Dem also highlights the case of the United States. As shown in Figure 9, levels of democratization in the United States (dotted and red lines) fluctuated as compared with the total of Western Europe and North America (black line), within the grey-shaded confidence interval.
Democracy in the U.S. expanded in the 1970s, with continuation of the Civil Rights era; demoocracy expanded at a much slower pace from 1980. The trend of democratization reversed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which led to the restrictive Patriot Act and the Iraq War of 2003. Soon after, democratization began to rebound. The Obama years (2009–2016) brought a peak in democracy, followed by a reversal as the first Trump administration (2017–2020) brought democracy back down to its 1975 level. A modest democratic recovery under Biden has now been replaced by the unfolding autocracy of Trump’s second term. Of course, there is much more to levels of democracy than presidential administrations.
Considering Democracy’s Relationship to Gender and Population
V-Dem’s analysis includes attention to gender, but the annual reports have not emphasized gender as a major factor in the shifts of democratization and autocratization. Still, some overall patterns can be seen. Post-1974 worldwide democratization (Figure 1 above) resulted from decolonization, civil rights movements, and the global rise of women’s and feminist movements from the 1960s. The United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1990) adopted the Beijing Declaration on women’s rights; it was signed by 189 countries. Since then, many new feminist organizations have formed, and nations have adopted targets for the election of women. But the wave of autocratization since 2010 has led to a backlash against women’s rights, and many pro-equality regulations have been repealed.
In response to these shifts, researchers have begun to assess democracy through the lens of women’s rights. At Georgetown University, for example, the Women, Peace and Security Index includes rankings on women’s status based on the widely varying levels of inclusion, justice and security for women around the world. Overall, results show high correlations of women’s status with measures of democracy like the V-Dem identifies. How exactly are these factors correlated? Studies are continuing.
In another example of this kind of analysis, an Australian survey took stock of both male and female self-identified political positions (Figure 10). It compares men and women aged 18-29 in nine countries, showing a large gender gap: Women see themselves as far more liberal than men.
Population growth is another—often neglected—factor through which one can consider democratic and autocratic trends. Population growth varies widely worldwide. At one extreme, Russia, East Asia, and most of Europe are now declining in population. At the other extreme, African countries grow at over two percent per year. And in between, growth averages one percent per year in the Americas and South Asia. Africans were nine percent of global population in 2000, but will be over one-quarter of humanity by 2030. (Further, African health is no longer far behind that of other regions, and African education is expanding, especially for females.) For all these reasons, one can expect that future African migration will grow, and that highly educated African migrants will be moving to Europe, Asia and the Americas. It is not yet known whether such a boom in growth may lead African countries to become more democratic.
There are, of course, many other factors that may influence the future of democracy in individual countries and, more broadly, around the world. In fact, V-Dem’s 2025 report touches on many areas not included in this piece. I encourage readers to take a closer look at the full text to gain a deeper understanding of the global decline in democracy and what the authors call a “truly global wave of autocratization.” Only time will tell whether this wave continues, or if we will begin to see signs of a reversal.