How democratic is each country, according to the main indices?
Every index has a maximum of 100, and the lowest possible score is 0 on V-Dem, -4 on Freedom House and 10 on the BTI: V-Dem's Liberal Democracy Index (2025, 179 places) runs from 1 in Eritrea, Myanmar and North Korea to 88 in Denmark; Freedom House (2025, 208 places) runs from -1 in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine to 100 in Finland; BTI's Democracy Status (2025, 137 places) runs from 15 in Yemen to 99 in Uruguay; of the 178 places scored by both V-Dem and Freedom House, the two scores differ by 20 points or more in 63.
democracy score points (maximum 100; each index has its own floor), each index rescaled only by its own maximum
0255075100
Year varies by country (2025) · grey: no figure
Latest figure for each country
Too small or not separate on this map: Tuvalu. Each colour is one figure per country: one year's rating, for the year shown in the ranking and when you point at a country.With "How sure" on, hatching marks countries whose latest figure has a trust score below 60 (Low or Very low).
All countries and territories
Each source's value links to its publisher; point at it for the source and year. A value in brackets is shown but doesn't count, and pointing at it says why. Retrieved 2026-11-02.
About this data
Every source on this page (3)
Who is behind the sources
- 56% Think tank or advocacy group
- 44% University or journal
Each publisher, its funding and its own description
- Freedom House · Think tank or advocacy groupFunding: Its audited financial statements for the year to 30 June 2025 say it was substantially funded by U.S. Government grants, 91% of total revenue; the rest came from international public agencies, corporations and foundations, and individual contributions. sourceIn its own words: “Our mission is to expand and defend freedom globally.” source, retrieved 2026-11-02
- Bertelsmann Stiftung · Think tank or advocacy groupFunding: Most of its income comes from its indirect holdings in Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, with further funds from cooperation partners and its financial reserves, and only a limited amount from donations. sourceIn its own words: “The Bertelsmann Stiftung is a private operating foundation which engages in evidence-based and solely nonprofit activities.” source, retrieved 2026-11-02
- V-Dem Institute (University of Gothenburg) · University or journalFunding: Funders listed on its own site include the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the European Research Council (via the University of Glasgow), the Research Council of Norway and the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Sweden and Denmark. sourceIn its own words: “…is an independent research institute and the Headquarters of the V-Dem project.” source, retrieved 2026-11-02
- Freedom House, Freedom in the World aggregate scoreUsed for 208 countries and territories; counts toward 208. Years 2025. Retrieved 2026-11-02.Open one of its 208 pages (each row's sources list its own)
- V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index (v2x_libdem)Used for 179 countries and territories; counts toward 179. Years 2025. Retrieved 2026-11-02.Open the publisher's page
- Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI), Democracy StatusUsed for 137 countries and territories; counts toward 137. Years 2025. Retrieved 2026-11-02.Data (Excel file)
Why the numbers differ (9)
- What counts as democracy. V-Dem's index weighs electoral democracy together with limits on executive power, such as courts and civil liberties. Freedom House adds up 25 questions on the political rights and civil liberties people have in practice, including where non-state actors restrict them. The BTI averages five criteria that include whether the state functions at all (stateness), and it caps some scores for countries it classes as autocracies. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Who codes V-Dem: it lists more than 4,200 country experts, aims for at least five on each question, and combines their answers with a statistical model that also reports uncertainty. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Who codes Freedom House: its 2026 edition used 134 analysts and 28 advisers, with Freedom House staff responsible for final decisions after regional review meetings. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Who codes the BTI: one country expert writes a report and scores it, a second reviews it blind and scores independently, then regional coordinators and the BTI Board calibrate and adopt the scores. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Who funds V-Dem: the University of Gothenburg hosts it, and its listed funders include the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the European Research Council, the Swedish Research Council, the European Commission, the World Bank and the foreign ministries of Sweden and Denmark. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Who funds Freedom House: its audited accounts for the year to 30 June 2025 show U.S. Government grants as 91% of total revenue, and report stop-work orders on many of those grants during that year. The Freedom in the World report names private donors and says Freedom House is solely responsible for its content. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Who funds the BTI: it is the index of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a foundation in Gütersloh, Germany, with experts from universities and think tanks. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Time. V-Dem and Freedom House score the calendar year 2025. BTI 2026 covers two years to 31 January 2025 and comes out every two years, so a recent event can show in one and not another. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Coverage. The BTI covers 137 countries and leaves out those that were OECD members by 1989, so Norway or the United States have no BTI score. V-Dem also scores units such as Hong Kong, Somaliland and Zanzibar, and Freedom House scores 13 territories. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
Common mistakes (5)
- Treating equal numbers as equal findings: rescaling gives the indices one maximum, not one definition, so 60 on one index and 60 on another are not the same assessment. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Reading small gaps as real differences: V-Dem publishes a standard deviation around each score, and neighbouring countries in its ranking often overlap. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Reading the BTI floor as 0: its lowest possible score here is 10, because its scale starts at 1. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Reading the Freedom House floor as 0: a question that subtracts points can take a total as low as -4. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Reading a Freedom House score as a rating of a government: Freedom House says it assesses the rights and freedoms individuals have, rather than governments as such. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
Context (4)
- V-Dem Codebook v16: the Liberal Democracy Index question, scale and formula (section 2.1.2). Retrieved 2026-11-02.
- V-Dem Methodology v16: how experts are recruited and how their answers are combined. Retrieved 2026-11-02.
- Freedom House methodology: the questions, the review process and changes over time. Retrieved 2026-11-02.
- BTI methodology: country selection, review process and how scores are combined. Retrieved 2026-11-02.
Sources considered and not used (6)
- V-Dem dataset files, and so the V-Dem series: V-Dem gives the dataset through a form asking for an email address and gender and approval of its privacy policy, so it was not fetched. The page uses the public Democracy Report table, which holds one year only. Tables in older reports were not joined into a series, because V-Dem re-estimates earlier years with each version. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Freedom House data files, and its series for most countries: Freedom House asks people who want its data files to submit a request, so none was fetched. Latest scores come from its public table. Series are shown only for the featured countries, Norway and the United States, read from each edition's public country page back to the 2017 edition, the oldest those pages link to. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- EIU Democracy Index: The Economist Intelligence Unit, a commercial company, offers the report through a form on its page, and the page itself lists no country scores, so no value could be read from the publisher without the form. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Polity5 (Center for Systemic Peace): The series ends in 2018, and its scale runs from -10 to +10. Dividing by the maximum alone would give -100 to +100, half of it negative, and shifting it would be our own transformation. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- BTI 2003 and the "BTI 2006_old" sheet: BTI 2003 used a one-to-five scale and BTI says it is not suitable for time series. The old 2006 sheet is superseded by the revised 2006 sheet in the same file. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
- Our World in Data democracy charts: Republishes the publishers' indices, so it is not a primary source and was not used. (source, retrieved 2026-11-02)
Download, compare, cite and report an error
- Download every value on this page (CSV)
- Compare with another statistic
- Cite as: RealStats, “How democratic is each country, according to the main indices?”, updated 2026-11-02, with the original sources listed on the page. Scores use formula version 1.0.
- Report an error on this page