The V-Dem Institute (Varieties of Democracy), founded by Staffan I. Lindberg in 2014, studies the qualities of government. The headquarters of the project is based at the department of political science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.[1]
Democracy indices
editThe V-Dem Institute publishes a number of high-profile datasets that describe qualities of different governments, annually published and publicly available for free.[2] These datasets are used by political scientists, due to information on hundreds of indicator variables describing all aspects of government, especially on the quality of democracy, inclusivity, and other economic indicators.[3] Compared to other measures of democracy (such as the Polity data series and Freedom House's Freedom in the World), the V-Dem Institute's measures of democracy are more granular[4] and 2020 included "more than 470 indicators, 82 mid-level indices, and 5 high-level indices covering 202 polities from the period of 1789–2019."[4] Political scientist Daniel Hegedus describes V-Dem as "the most important provider of quantitative democracy data for scholarly research."[4]
The V-Dem institute also republishes 59 other indicators[5] and several other[which?] indices which are created, in part, with the assistance of V-Dem indices. The Digital Society Project is a subset of indicators on V-Dem's survey which asks questions about the political status of social media and the internet.[6]
Democracy Report
editThe V-Dem Institute publishes the Democracy Report that describes the state of democracy in the world, with a focus on democratization and autocratization.[7] The Democracy Report is published annually in March. The Democracy Report, the dataset, scientific articles, and working papers are free to download on the institute’s website, which also provides interactive graphic tools.
V-Party Dataset
editParty positions for all political parties above a vote share of 5% in 169 countries are published as V-Party Dataset by V-Dem Institute.[8] The V-Party Dataset includes indices of Anti-Pluralism, Populism, Cultural Dimension and Economic Left-Right. The Anti-Pluralism Index is modeled as lack of commitment to democratic process, disrespect for fundamental minority rights, demonization of opponents, and acceptance of political violence. The dataset demonstrates higher autocratization for high anti-pluralism and populism.[9]
Regimes of the World
editThe Regimes of the World (RoW)[10][11] distinguishes four types of political systems: closed autocracies, electoral autocracies, electoral democracies, and liberal democracies. This classification is built on V-Dem Democracy Core indices.[12]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ "Varieties of democracy (V-dem) – Varieties of democracy (V-dem), University of Gothenburg, Sweden".
- ^ Redden, Elizabeth (30 March 2020). "Ranking Academic Freedom Globally". Inside Higher Ed.
- ^ V-Dem Institute (2022). "The V-Dem Dataset". Retrieved 8 December 2022.
- ^ a b c Hegedüs, Daniel (2020). "Varieties of Democracy: Measuring Two Centuries of Political Change. By Michael Coppedge, John Gerring, Adam Glynn, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Svend-Erik Skaaning, and Jan Teorell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 226p. $99.99 cloth". Perspectives on Politics. 18 (4): 1258–1260. doi:10.1017/S1537592720003059. ISSN 1537-5927.
- ^ Rankin, Elizabeth (8 January 2016). "New democracy dataset to 'revolutionize' democracy research". Notre Dame News.
- ^ Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Steven Fish, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Lührmann, Seraphine F. Maerz, Kyle L.Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Johannes vonRömer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundtröm, EitanTzelgov, Luca Uberti, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2021. "V-Dem Codebook v11"Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.[1] Archived 8 June 2021 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Democracy Reports". V-Dem Institute. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
- ^ "V-Party Dataset". V-Dem Institute. Retrieved 2 June 2023.
- ^ Medzihorsky, Juraj; Lindberg, Staffan I. (2023). "Walking the Talk: How to Identify Anti-Pluralist Parties" (PDF). Party Politics. doi:10.1177/13540688231153092.
- ^ Lührmann, Anna, Marcus Tannenberg, and Staffan I. Lindberg. "Regimes of the world (RoW): Opening new avenues for the comparative study of political regimes". Politics and Governance 6.1 (2018): 60.
- ^ Herre, Bastian (2 December 2021). "The 'Regimes of the World' data: how do researchers measure democracy?". Our World in Data. Retrieved 12 March 2023.
- ^ Herre, Bastian; Ortiz-Ospina, Esteban; Roser, Max (15 March 2013). "Democracy". Our World in Data. Retrieved 16 March 2023.
Further reading
edit- Max Fisher, "U.S. Allies Drive Much of World’s Democratic Decline, Data Shows: Washington-aligned countries backslid at nearly double the rate of non-allies, data shows, complicating long-held assumptions about American influence" New York Times Nov 16, 2021
- Vanessa A. Boese, Markus Eberhardt: Which Institutions Rule? Unbundling the Democracy-Growth Nexus, V-Dem Institute, Series 2022: 131, February 2022
External links
edit