Data
V-Dem Dataset v16
Electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative and egalitarian democracy indices, plus the Regimes of the World classification.
How to cite
Coppedge, M. et al. (2026). V-Dem Dataset v16. Varieties of Democracy Project. https://www.v-dem.net/data/the-v-dem-dataset/
What it contains
The V-Dem dataset is one of the most comprehensive sources for comparing political regimes. Version 16 includes hundreds of expert-coded variables and five main indices:
- Electoral democracy (polyarchy):
v2x_polyarchy. - Liberal democracy:
v2x_libdem. - Participatory democracy:
v2x_partipdem. - Deliberative democracy:
v2x_delibdem. - Egalitarian democracy:
v2x_egaldem.
It also includes the Regimes of the World (RoW) classification: closed autocracies, electoral autocracies, electoral democracies and liberal democracies.
How the portal uses it
Visualizations on this portal extract a country-year subset and compute population-weighted averages. The code and version are documented on each figure. The full dataset is not redistributed; the original source is linked.
License and citation
V-Dem is published under CC BY-SA 4.0. Any published derivative must keep the same license and credit the project. The recommended citation is in the block above.
Caveats
The indices are aggregates with measurement error. A small change is not a collapse; look at the trajectory, the components and the uncertainty. Each visualization page explains what was calculated and what was not.