CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 51Political Conflict and GovernancePolitical Theory and DemocracyElectoral Systems and Political Participation

State of the world 2024: 25 years of autocratization – democracy trumped?

Open access
Nord, Marina, Angiolillo, Fabio, Good God, Ana, Lindberg, Staffan I.·2025·Democratization
DOI 10.1080/13510347.2025.2487825
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Using the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset version 15, we offer six main findings about contemporary trends of regime transformations. First, the average level of liberal democracy continues to decline, and is back to 1985-level by population-weighted averages. Second, freedom of expression is worsening in nearly a quarter of all countries in the world, setting a new absolute record during the last 25 years. Third, 45 countries are in ongoing episodes of autocratization, and 19 countries are in ongoing episodes of democratization. Fourth, almost half of all autocratizing countries are increasingly spreading disinformation, and a quarter of all countries are affected by increasing political polarization. Fifth, we launch a watchlist initiative – an approach to detect early signs of autocratization and democratization. Sixth, we provide qualitative evidence of ongoing executive aggrandizement in the USA under the first two months of the second Trump administration. We argue that the USA could become the fastest autocratizing country in contemporary history that does not involve a coup d'état and that the second Trump administration has already taken American democracy closer to a democratic breakdown.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1080/13510347.2025.2487825

Cites

29 of 29 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

46 of the 75 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Nord, M., Angiolillo, F., Good God, A., & Lindberg, S. I.
Affiliations
University of Gothenburg (SE)
Corresponding author
Nord, Marina
ORCID
Venue
Democratization
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
2025-04-24
Volume
32
Issue
4
Pages
839-864
ISSN
  • 1351-0347 (ISSN-L)
  • 1743-890X
DOI
10.1080/13510347.2025.2487825
OpenAlex
W4409759073
Cited by
51
References
75
Citations by year
2026: 33 · 2025: 18
FWCI
87.84
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
Democratization (publishedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • Swedish Research Council (2014-00038)
  • Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse (2018.0144)
  • European Commission (2023/442-497])
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Conflict and Governance
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
Keywords
autocratization, freedom of expression, disinformation, political polarization, early warning indicators, executive aggrandizement, Trump administration, democratic breakdown, regime transformation

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review