The Global Democratic Recession
19 consecutive years of decline across 91 countries
Liberty Score
Rated "Free"
of Decline
Below Event Horizon
(HCI ≥ 70, L < 60)
Momentum
The State of Play (2025)
Democracy has been in continuous retreat since 2006. By every major index — Freedom House, V-Dem, EIU Democracy Index, Bertelsmann Transformation Index — the share of the world's population living under democratic governance has fallen. The Governance Topology Index confirms this pattern across 91 countries and 225 years of data.
The global mean liberty score stands at 48 out of 100. Only 34% of countries in the dataset are rated "Free." The decline is not a blip: it has persisted for 19 consecutive years, the longest sustained democratic recession since the index's coverage begins in 1800. Below the event horizon threshold (L ≈ 52–55), the recovery rate drops to just 3% — meaning countries that fall far enough rarely come back.
Seven Regions, Seven Stories
The democratic recession is not uniform. Each region tells a different story — from Europe's fracture lines to Asia's bifurcation between democratic and authoritarian development models.
| Region | Status | Trend | Key Story |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western Europe | Mostly stable | Slow erosion at margins | Hungary, Poland testing EU guardrails |
| Eastern Europe & Balkans | Mixed | Diverging | Split between EU-anchored democracies and backsliders |
| Americas | Declining | US driving regional shift | Largest single-country liberty decline in dataset |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | Low base | Some bright spots | Fragile gains in Senegal, Kenya; coups in Sahel |
| MENA | Largely authoritarian | Stagnant | Arab Spring gains mostly reversed |
| Asia-Pacific | Bifurcated | Two futures | Democratic (Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan) vs. authoritarian (China, Myanmar) |
| Central Asia & Caucasus | Authoritarian | Consolidated | Russia's war accelerating regional autocratization |
The Event Horizon
Below L ≈ 52–55, the probability of democratic self-correction drops to 3%. This "event horizon" represents the point at which institutional capture becomes self-reinforcing. Currently, 42 of 91 countries in the dataset sit below this threshold.
The Great Decoupling
Perhaps the most troubling finding: capability no longer predicts liberty. Before 1990, countries with high human capital scores (HCI ≥ 70) were almost always democracies. Today, 39 "capable autocracies" — from China and Singapore to the Gulf states — demonstrate that authoritarian regimes can deliver education, health, and infrastructure without political freedom.
Read The Great Decoupling →Explore the Evidence
China: The Absorbing State
How the world's largest autocracy stabilised below the event horizon with high capability scores.
India: At the Ridgeline
The world's largest democracy balances at the critical threshold between consolidation and erosion.
Comparative Trajectories
Side-by-side trajectory analysis across regime types, regions, and time periods.
195 Countries
Interactive explorer covering every sovereign state with current liberty and capability scores.
225 Years of Data
The full historical dataset from 1800 to 2025, charting the long arc of political development.