The V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute has released its Democracy Report 2024, Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot [PDF]. V-Dem probably has become the most widely used measure of quality of democracy (or democracy’s absence, as in the case of autocracy). It has several strengths over other older measures, and like any index, weaknesses. This planting will not be about reviewing strengths and weaknesses, nor will it delve into the methodology. There are many places you can go for such information. I simply have some questions and concerns, focused on a few specific cases that are surprising to me.
V-Dem establishes several categories of regime, based on threshold values of its various scores. They are: Liberal Democracy, Electoral Democracy, Electoral Autocracy, and Closed Autocracy. There is also a “Grey Zone” between Electoral Democracy and Electoral Autocracy.
The report states, ““Notably, Israel lost its long-time status as liberal democracy in 2023.” It goes on (at p. 14):
The story in Israeli politics for the first nine months of 2023 was indeed efforts by the governing coalition to reduce the authority of the judiciary. This effort, however, failed–or at least has been placed on indefinite hold. The effort was essentially dormant already before the 7 October invasion and massacres by Hamas. The bill mentioned on “reasonableness” was the only part of the proposed package that passed. Left unsaid in the quoted statement is why such a measure is a key piece of evidence for descent into a lower category of democracy. And then what happened? The Supreme Court itself invalidated the new law! Between the mass demonstrations against the government’s plans, internal divisions in the coalition that led to multiple postponements of other bills in the package, and the court itself stepping in, one might consider 2023 to have been a stress test of liberal democracy in Israel that the system passed.1
Moreover, the movement the V-Dem measures picked up was pretty small. See the location of Israel at about the middle of the “top 20–30%” group. The grey dots and confidence intervals indicate the score in 2013, while the black indicates the score in 2023. This is hardly a dramatic headline-worthy drop–obviously there is substantial confidence interval overlap–and perhaps indicates a more general problem of translating continuous measures into categories.
As for other countries in this range, the one indicated in blue, Seychelles, is one that moved into the liberal democratic category and was previously an electoral autocracy. As the 2013 to 2023 comparison shows, this is indeed a major movement. Those in orange are “autocratizing.” I will admit to being surprised to see Greece in this category. Note that Israel is not in orange even though the report says it has moved one category down from liberal democracy. Those in orange actually show changes outside the metric’s confidence interval. So why the drama over Israel’s small score change?
The list of countries in the sub-category of “electoral democracy plus” is shown below. Note that Austria and Portugal are also countries that have lost their status as liberal democracy since 2013, according to V-Dem. This is baffling.2 Greece is indicated as experiencing an ongoing “episode” of autocratization,3 whereas Montenegro is improving.
India is classified as an “electoral autocracy” since 2018. This category is defined in the report as a country in which “Multiparty elections for the executive exist; insufficient levels of fundamental requisites such as freedom of expression and association, and free and fair elections.” This seems like an overstatement of the situation in India to me, although I am certainly no expert on India.
Mexico is in the “grey zone” meaning the confidence intervals on its scores overlap the categories electoral democracy4 and electoral autocracy. Here is a comment the report makes about the country: “Mexico has elections scheduled for June 2024, and tensions are high amid the gradual autocratization under President Obrador5 and the MORENA party. President Obrador is now accused of trying to rig the system in favor of his successor Claudia Sheinbaum. Large crowds are turning out to protest and to protect the independence of the electoral authority” (p. 41). Putting Mexico on an autocracy watch could be justified, but calling it in a grey zone where it might be right on the brink of falling out of the ranks of democracy does not seem right to me. Other countries in this grey zone currently include Albania, Botswana, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, and Zambia.
Index-making is hard. Even a flawed index can be valuable. I am concerned that some of these categorizations that I have highlighted here call into question the value of assigning categorical boundaries on this continuous measure. I do not agree that Israel has ceased to be a liberal democracy, have my doubts that Mexico and India are not (or are very nearly not) democracies at all, and am simply puzzled by Greece and Portugal losing their “liberal” status.
Notes
- I do not know what to say about that last sentence in the excerpt, other than to doubt there is some actual change in this condition. Perhaps the experts surveyed are reacting to comments by the Minister of National Security (head of the police, among other functions), while failing (as the earlier sentences indicate) to notice that the courts are in fact still functioning as a check (as is much of the rest of the government, including the Prime Minister). In other words, some of this may reflect the hazards of relying on expert surveys. An aside: I was not contacted, although I have participated in expert surveys on other topics regarding Israel and I believe that I have been invited (but declined) to participate for V-Dem on another country in some past year. ↩︎
- In a table at the end of the report one can see the component scores and identify which factor has contributed most to the change of category in a given country. For Austria and Portugal it is the “participatory” component that is mostly responsible. ↩︎
- “Cyprus and Portugal fell from liberal to electoral democracy in 2023, while Austria and Greece made the same transition in 2021 and 2022, respectively” (p. 15). ↩︎
- Electoral democracy is defined as “Multiparty elections for the executive are free and fair; satisfactory degrees of suffrage, freedom of expression, freedom of association.” Liberal democracy as “Requirements of Electoral Democracy are met; judicial and legislative constraints on the executive along with the protection of civil liberties and equality before the law.” ↩︎
- Sic. His family name is actually López Obrador. ↩︎