Democracy Without Borders: Democracy declined in 42 countries in 2023, new V-Dem report says

A study by a think tank arguing that democracies are shrinking.

- Click here for the article.

The V-Dem Institute based in Gothenburg in Sweden has presented its annual report on the state of global democracy for the 8th consecutive year, gathering information from 202 countries and measuring over 600 different attributes of democracy. The report has become one of the most prominent sources in the state of democracy around the world.

The V-Dem Democracy Report 2024, titled “Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot”, highlights the continuity of an autocratization trend in the world, noted by previous reports from V-Dem and other organizations such as Freedom House, the Economist Intelligence Unit or International IDEA.

According to V-Dem, the share of the world’s population living in autocratizing countries since 2009 has exceeded the proportion living in democratizing countries, with 71% of the world’s population or 5.7 billion people currently living in autocracies. This constitutes a 48% increase compared to ten years ago.

According to the report, autocratization in 2023 was ongoing in 42 countries, home to 35% of the world’s population, while democratization was taking place in 18 countries, hosting only 5% of the world’s population.

Sorted by the regime types identified by V-Dem, in 2023, 32 countries in the world were considered liberal democracies, 59 electoral democracies, 55 electoral autocracies and 33 closed autocracies.