WWW.V-DEM.NET
May 16, 2017
For those of us interested in the development of democracy both in the short-term and in the much longer-term, what is called the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden is a must. This is likely to be the most comprehensive and openly accessible database of democracy indicators covering 177 countries, 117 years (starting in 1900) and more than 350 indicators, as well as 52 indices measuring varying aspects of democracy. This is why V-Dem is short for Varieties of Democracy, and this perspective is important. It is more than a simplistic understanding of one particular version of Western democracy!