Democracy indices
measures of democracy
Democracy indices / rankings are quantitative and comparative measurements of the state of democracy for different countries according to various definitions and concepts of democracy, to allow for their assessment and development.
The democracy indices / rankings differ in whether they are categorical, such as classifying countries into democracies, hybrid regimes, and autocracies, or continuous values. The qualitative nature of democracy indices / rankings enables data analytical approaches for studying causal mechanisms of regime transformation processes.
Democracy indices/rankings vary in their scope and the weight assigned to different aspects of democracy. These aspects include the breadth and strength of core democratic institutions, freedom of expression, the competitiveness and inclusiveness of polyarchy, governance quality, adherence to democratic norms, co-option of opposition, and other related factors, such as electoral system manipulation, electoral fraud, and popular support of anti-democratic alternatives.
Prominent democracy indices
Freedom in the World, a yearly survey and report by the U.S.-based non-governmental organization Freedom House. It measures the degree of civil liberties and political rights in the world nations. Depending on the ratings, the nations are then classified as "Free", "Partly Free", or "Not Free".
The Economist Democracy Index, by the UK-based Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), is an assessment of countries' democracy. Countries are rated as "full democracies", "flawed democracies", "hybrid regimes", or "authoritarian regimes".
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This entry incorporates text from “Democracy indices” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.