The Share of Democracies has Stagnated but Remains Near its Historical High

Over the last twenty years, the share of countries that are democracies has remained relatively stable.

Relying on data from Varieties of Democracy, which we just updated, the chart shows that around half of all countries are democracies.

The world remains close to the historical high in the early 2000s and is much more democratic than 50 years ago; only 20% of countries were democracies in the early 1970s. However, the chart shows smaller changes within democratic regimes: the share of liberal democracies, which grant additional individual and minority rights and constrain their governments, has decreased over the last decade.

While democracy has remained fairly resilient over the last few decades, this recent stagnation and limited rollback stresses that progress on increasing political rights is neither linear nor guaranteed.