Liberal democracy index

Quick info
Data type	Numeric
Scale	Metric
Value labels	Not applicable
Technical name	polnat_sys_libdem_vdem
Category	Regime characteristics
Label	Liberal democracy index
Related indicators	Electoral democracy index Participatory democracy index Deliberative democracy index Egalitarian democracy index

The "Liberal democracy index" is part of V-Dem's high level democracy indices capturing features of democracy at the most abstract level. The "Liberal democracy index" in particular captures to what extent the ideal of liberal democracy is achieved. It ranges from low (0) to high (1).

It is conceptually defined as follows: "The liberal principle of democracy emphasizes the importance of protecting individual and minority rights against the tyranny of the state and the tyranny of the majority. The liberal model takes a 'negative' view of political power insofar as it judges the quality of democracy by the limits placed on government. This is achieved by constitutionally protected civil liberties, strong rule of law, an independent judiciary, and effective checks and balances that, together, limit the exercise of executive power. To make this a measure of liberal democracy, the index also takes the level of electoral democracy into account." (Coppedge et al. 2019, 40).

Coding rules

The index is composed of several components and lower-level indices applying V-Dem's measurement model (Pemstein et al. 2019) which in turn are indices built from a number of indicators. For the index aggregation formula see Coppedge et al. 2019, Appendix A.

Bibliographic info

Citation:

• Coppedge, Michael, Staffan Lindberg, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jan Teorell. 2016. "Measuring high level democratic principles using the V-Dem data". International Political Science Review 37 (2): 580-593. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0192512115622046

Related publications:

• Coppedge, Michael, Staffan I. Lindberg, Svend-Erik Skaaning and Jan Teorell. 2015. "Measuring High Level Democratic Principles using the V-Dem Data". V-Dem Working Paper No. 6. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.
• Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, M. Steven Fish, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Lührmann, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Agnes Cornell, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Valeriya Mechkova, Johannes von Römer, Aksel Sundtröm, Eitan Tzelgov, Luca Uberti, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2019. "V-Dem Codebook v9". 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. 2019. "The V-Dem Measurement Model: Latent Variable Analysis for Cross-National and Cross-Temporal Expert-Coded Data". V-Dem Working Paper No. 21. 4th edition. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.

Misc

Project manager(s):

• Nils Düpont (A01)

Data release:

• The indicator is included in WeSIS rev. 1

Revisions:

• 2019.10 Initial upload for WeSIS rev. 1

Sources

• Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, M. Steven Fish, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Lührmann, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Steven Wilson, Agnes Cornell, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Nina Ilchenko, Joshua Krusell, Laura Maxwell, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Josefine Pernes, Johannes von Römer, Natalia Stepanova, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2019. "V-Dem Country-Year Dataset v9". Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemcy19