Regimes of the world index (4 categories)
| Quick info | |
|---|---|
| Data type | Numeric |
| Scale | Ordinal |
| Value labels |
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| Technical name | polnat_polity_regimes_vdem |
| Category | Political factors |
| Label | Regimes of the world index (4 categories) |
| Related indicators | |
V-Dem's "Regimes of the world index" classifies political regimes on an ordinal scale ranging from closed autocracy (0) to liberal democracy (3).
Coding rules
The classification is based on several components and high level democracy indices which in turn are indices built from a number of indicators applying V-Dem's measurement model (Pemstein et al. 2021). For the index aggregation formula and cut-off points see Lührmann, Tannenberg, and Lindberg 2018, 64 (also Coppedge et al. 2021, 283).
Conceptually, the four regime types are defined as follows (Lührmann, Tannenberg, and Lindberg 2018, 63):
- Closed autocracy: "No de-facto multiparty, or free and fair elections, or Dahl’s institutional prerequisites not minimally fulfilled; No multiparty elections for the chief executive or the legislature"
- Electoral autocracy: "No de-facto multiparty, or free and fair elections, or Dahl’s institutional prerequisites not minimally fulfilled; De-jure multiparty elections for the chief executive and the legislature"
- Electoral democracy: "De-facto multiparty, free and fair elections, and Dahl’s institutional prerequisites minimally fulfilled; The rule of law, or liberal principles not satisfied"
- Liberal democracy: "De-facto multiparty, free and fair elections, and Dahl’s institutional prerequisites minimally fulfilled; The rule of law, and liberal principles satisfied"
Bibliographic info
Citation: Lührmann, Anna, Marcus Tannenberg, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2018. "Regimes of the World (RoW): Opening New Avenues for the Comparative Study of Political Regimes." Politics and Governance 6 (1): 60–77. https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v6i1.1214
Related publications:- 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 von Römer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundtröm, Eitan Tzelgov, Luca Uberti, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2021. "V-Dem Codebook v11.1" Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.
- Pemstein, Daniel, Kyle L. Marquardt, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Juraj Medzihorsky, Joshua Krusell, Farhad Miri, and Johannes von Römer. 2021. “The V-Dem Measurement Model: Latent Variable Analysis for Cross-National and Cross-Temporal Expert-Coded Data”. V-Dem Working Paper No. 21. 6th edition. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.
- Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Fabio Angiolillo, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Steven Fish, Linnea Fox, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, Ana Good God, Sandra Grahn, Allen Hicken, Katrin Kinzelbach, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Anja Neundorf, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Johannes von Römer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundström, Marcus Tannenberg, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Felix Wiebrecht, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2025. "V-Dem Codebook v15". Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.
- Pemstein, Daniel, Kyle L. Marquardt, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Juraj Medzihorsky, Joshua Krusell, Farhad Miri, and Johannes von Römer. 2025. "The V-Dem Measurement Model: Latent Variable Analysis for Cross-National and Cross-Temporal Expert-Coded Data". V-Dem Working Paper No. 21. 10th edition. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.
Misc
Project manager(s): Nils Düpont (INF), Paul Bederke
Data release:- Version 0.001: Initial release
- Version 0.002: Updated with data from V-Dem v10 + two erroneous COW codes fixed resulting from country name mismatches
- Version 0.003: Updated with data from V-Dem v11.1
- Version 0.004: Updated with data from V-Dem v15
Revisions: Prior to version 0.004 data for Germany and Yemen were separated adhering to their COW code in a strict sense; as of v0.004 data is now in line with V-Dem's continous ID reflecting the "related unit coding" of WeSIS.
Sources
- Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, Nazifa Alizada, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Steven Fish, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Garry Hindle, Nina Ilchenko, Joshua Krusell, Anna Lührmann, Seraphine F. Maerz, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Josefine Pernes, Johannes von Römer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, Steven Wilson and Daniel Ziblatt. 2021. "V-Dem [Country-Year/Country-Date] Dataset v11.1" Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds21
- Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Fabio Angiolillo, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Steven Fish, Linnea Fox, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, Ana Good God, Sandra Grahn, Allen Hicken, Katrin Kinzelbach, Joshua Krusell, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Natalia Natsika, Anja Neundorf, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Johannes von Römer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundström, Marcus Tannenberg, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Felix Wiebrecht, Tore Wig, Steven Wilson, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2025. "V-Dem [Country-Year/Country-Date] Dataset v15" Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds25
