Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem)
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The V-Dem Dataset v16 and the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026: "Unraveling The Democratic Era?"
Download V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026
V-Dem Steering Committee:
Release statement for v.16 of the V-Dem dataset
Version 16 of the V-Dem dataset is now released. The dataset includes several hundred indicators along with five indices that measure a country’s overall degree of democracy, according to different definitions of democracy.
Read the V-Dem Steering Committee's comments on the v16 data release
V-Dem provides a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that reflects the complexity of the concept of democracy as a system of rule that goes beyond the simple presence of elections. We distinguish between five high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian, and collect data to measure these principles.
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V-Dem data can also be downloaded through the e-infrastructure Demscore that brings together some of the world's largest social science datasets