The International Democracy Survey of 2021

Posted on January 28, 2022 by Dennis SILVERMAN

The International Democracy Survey Evaluation of governments for 2021 shows continual decrease in Democratic ratings.  They use 3,500 scholars and country experts to evaluate 179 countries on hundreds of attributes.  The 2021 report is at V-Dem.org.  In general, the global decline in Democracies takes the world back to 1990.

68% or two thirds of the people in the world live in autocracies in 87 states.  India, with 1.4 billion population, has declined from a democracy to an electoral autocracy.  Liberal democracies have declined from 41 countries to 32, which contain 14% or one-seventh of the world’s population.

The latest wave of autocratization has encompassed 25 countries with 35% of the world’s population, or 2.6 billion people.  Only 4% of the world’s population are in countries which are democratizing.  

32 countries threaten freedom of expression, which is declining rapidly.  There is government censorship in 42 countries.  In 39 countries, the media does self censorship.

Since the 2021 ratings were done in December 2020, for the United States, they do not include the insurrection of January 6th, 2021, the second impeachment of President Trump, or the Big Lie still dominating the Republican politicians or political party.  The ratings of Afghanistan does not include its takeover by the Taliban.

The countries included in my table this year, include the USA, the giant population countries of China and India, and others currently of importance to the United States.  The nine countries from Estonia through Bulgaria are the Eastern NATO countries either on the Russian or Belarus border.  Moldova is West of Ukraine and East of Romania, in dark Gray in the map, but not in NATO.

There are six Indexes, each up to 100%, or as a fraction, up to 1.00.  The international rankings are based on the first, the Liberal Democratic Index.  The six indexes are:

LDI:  Liberal Democratic Index

EDI:  Electoral Democracy Index

LCI:  Liberal Component Index

ECI:  Egalitarian Component Index

PCI:  Participatory Component Index

DCI:  Deliberative Component Index

Country Rank LDI EDI LCI ECI PCI DCI
USA 31 0.73 0.81 0.9 0.73 0.66 0.61
China 174 0.04 0.07 0.15 0.32 0.19 0.41
India 97 0.34 0.45 0.69 0.48 0.54 0.51
Brazil 56 0.51 0.69 0.71 0.4 0.58 0.46
Russia 153 0.1 0.26 0.24 0.59 0.5 0.34
Iran 140 0.14 0.19 0.43 0.56 0.14 0.37
Turkey 149 0.11 0.29 0.24 0.46 0.4 0.14
Ukraine 92 0.35 0.54 0.57 0.67 0.59 0.77
Belarus 163 0.08 0.29 0.09 0.78 0.23 0.14
Afghanistan 129 0.19 0.37 0.4 0.25 0.28 0.68
Estonia 9 0.83 0.89 0.94 0.89 0.64 0.75
Latvia 29 0.74 0.82 0.91 0.84 0.68 0.82
Lithuania 23 0.76 0.82 0.95 0.88 0.72 0.87
Poland 63 0.49 0.63 0.73 0.84 0.61 0.51
Czechia 34 0.71 0.8 0.88 0.9 0.59 0.76
Slovakia 26 0.76 0.84 0.92 0.76 0.69 0.77
Hungary 89 0.37 0.47 0.74 0.66 0.62 0.49
Romania 54 0.55 0.76 0.81 0.66 0.62 0.49
Bulgaria 62 0.49 0.6 0.8 0.69 0.71 0.78
Moldova 69 0.47 0.62 0.76 0.68 0.6 0.61

The range of uncertainties in the table is generally about 10% of the values, but in the last DCI column it is about 0.67.

The Eastern NATO Members, North to South, are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.  Moldova is an independent Republic.

The populations in this region are:  Ukraine 44.1 million; Poland 38.0 m; Romania 19.3 m; Czechia 10.7 m; Hungary 9.7 m; Belarus 9.4 m; Bulgaria 6.9 m; Slovakia 5.5 m; Lithuania 2.8 m; Moldova 2.6 m; Latvia 1.9 m; and Estonia 1.3 m.

Russia has a population of 144 million, and Ukraine’s population is about 30.6% of Russia’s.  Neglecting Belarus which is subservient to Russia, the combined population of these free countries is 143 million, the same size as Russia.  The combined population of the Eastern NATO countries is 96 million, or 67% or 2/3 of the Russian population.

Here is our coverage of the 2019 ratings with graphs of Democracy ratings from 1900 to 2018.   Here is our table on the 2020 ratings.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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