Methodology and data
Sources, versions, calculations and reproducibility criteria.
Principles
The portal separates three things that are often mixed: data, interpretation and opinion. Every figure states its source, dataset version and calculation method. When a series cannot be reproduced, the text says so.
Main sources
- V-Dem Dataset v16 (March 2026), published under CC BY-SA 4.0. Used for the democracy indices and the Regimes of the World classification.
- GDELT Project, event data and documentation. Used in the analyses of protest and repression, with the reporting-bias caveats explained in each piece.
- Published studies cited in the analyses. Figures that do not come from our own calculation are attributed to their source.
Calculations
V-Dem visualizations are generated with scripts/build-vdem-data.R from the dataset downloaded by scripts/fetch-vdem.sh. The resulting JSON files are stored in public/data/ and versioned with the repository.
- The global series is a population-weighted average.
- V-Dem stops publishing
e_popafter 2019; the last available value is carried forward and documented in the metadata. - The radar uses 2024 scores for five selected countries.
- The RoW distribution uses the 2025 classification and population weights.
Reproducibility
The code and scripts are in the project repository. Every figure includes a downloadable data table. V-Dem updates can change absolute scores; different versions are not compared without a warning.
Corrections
If you find a data error, an incomplete citation or a methodological problem, report it with the piece and the source. A contact channel will be published when the portal goes live.