Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem)

Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) is a new approach to conceptualizing and measuring democracy. It is a collaboration among more than 50 scholars worldwide which is co-hosted by the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden; and the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame, USA. With four Principal Investigators, two Program managers, fifteen Project Managers, more than thirty Regional Managers, almost 200 Country Coordinators, and approximately 2,800 Country Experts, the V-Dem project is one of the largest social science data collection projects focusing on research. V-Dem collects data for 350+ indicators across a wide range of democracy aspects. Electoral democracy is in the centre and linked to this concept we find six additional dimensions of democracy: liberal, majoritarian, deliberative, participatory, consensual and egalitarian. In addition to a number of main indices, data is broken down into a number of components that are available to the user along with all indicators. Through the unique character of the database, old and new questions about the nature, growth and survival of democracy can be tested in a way not possible before. Data is available for 177 countries from 1900 to 2016. Altogether, the database consists of approximately 17 million data points. The database is updated annually and new datasets are launched every year in the spring. The dataset is available for download here: https://www.v-dem.net/en/data/data-version-7-1/Opens in a new tab The data can also be explored online via: https://www.v-dem.net/en/analysis/Opens in a new tab Purpose: The world's largest database on democracy. The database provides 350+ indicators for 177 countries 1900-2016.