The Global State of Democracy Initiative
International IDEA launched the Global State of Democracy (GSoD) Initiative in 2016. This Initiative provides evidence-based, balanced analysis and data on the state and quality of democracy for 173 countries across the world. It aims to contribute to the public debate on democracy and inform policy interventions to strengthen democracy. The Initiative currently has several workstreams, including regional partnership hubs, digitalization and democracy, and data visualization. The Initiative’s primary knowledge products are the Democracy Tracker, the Global State of Democracy (GSoD) Indices, and the Global State of Democracy (GSoD) Reports.
Democracy Tracker
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The Democracy Tracker provides comprehensive, monthly-updated qualitative data on democracy and human rights in 173 countries. The monthly updates flag developments that could impact the status quo of a country’s democratic performance. Each update indicates improvement, decline, or continuity with regard to democratic performance. Past updates are available as a searchable and downloadable archive.
Country profile pages offer detailed, context-setting narrative overviews; data on each country’s political system and compliance with international human rights treaties; and a risk assessment, alerting users to countries’ risk of democratic backsliding and breakdown.
Global State of Democracy Indices
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The Global State of Democracy Indices (GSoD Indices) measure performance across a broad range of indicators of democracy, covering 173 countries from 1975–2021. The GSoD Indices are built on a theoretical framework that organizes specific measures of aspects of democratic performance into five high-level attributes: Representative Government, Fundamental Rights, Checks on Government, Impartial Administration, and Participatory Engagement. These attributes are considered individually and are not combined into a single score for democracy.
The GSoD Indices are composite measures that are built from 116 individual indicators collected by other organizations using different types of sources, including expert surveys, standards-based coding by research groups and analysts, and observational data. The GSoD indices include estimated values for 28 indicators (attributes, subattributes, and subcomponents) per country per year. All the indicators are scaled to vary between 0 and 1, with 0 representing the lowest achievement in the whole sample and 1 the highest.
Global State of Democracy Reports
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Global State of Democracy 2022: Forging Social Contracts in a Time
of Discontent
International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy Report 2022 provides an overview of the global and regional trends related to democracy and human rights, along with examples of efforts to reinvigorate social contracts around the world.
International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy Report 2022 provides an overview of the global and regional trends related to democracy and human rights, along with examples of efforts to reinvigorate social contracts around the world.
International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy Report 2022 provides an overview of the global and regional trends related to democracy and human rights, along with examples of efforts to reinvigorate social contracts around the world.
Please contact us if you would like to learn more about the regional partnership hubs, digitalization and democracy, and data visualization.