In: V-Dem Democracy Report 2024

The 2024 report shows that autocratization continues to be the dominant trend, as we have reported in previous Democracy Reports. New for this year is a systematic look at more fine-grained regime changes – countries that are experiencing democratic declines despite having recently im- proved (what we call Bell-turns), and inversely countries that are improving despite having recently been in a period of decline (what we call U-turns). This volatility is often masked when simply taking the difference between countries’ present democracy levels and ten years ago, as done in previous Democracy Reports. Yet, countries’ democratic volatility is of substantial interest. Not least, exam- ples of countries that have stopped and reversed autocratization are critical for pro-democratic actors to learn from. Likewise, examples of countries where democratization has in short order been reversed are tales of caution in how democratization can fail to take a permanent foothold. We think this new analysis provides a more nuanced depiction of trends of regime change and informs the reader on how both democratization and autocratization can be stopped and reversed. SINCE 2019, the V-Dem Institute has also been the host of the newly established (inter)national infrastructure DEMSCORE, which brings together some of the world’s leading research infrastruc- tures and contextual databases. More information can be found at https://www.demscore.se. Additionally, over the past year, V-Dem has continued to expand on existing collaborations and entered new ones.

Access the full report here.