V-Dem Democracy Indices: Country-Year Data, 1789-2025

Get the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem v16) indices for every country and year from 1789 to 2025 as clean rows: the five democracy indices (electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, egalitarian), corruption, rule of law, civil liberties, media freedom, women's empowerment and more. 64 indices in all, each with V-Dem's confidence bounds, plus the Regimes of the World classification.

No sign-up form, no email, no CSV wrangling. Pick countries, years and variables and get one row per country-year.

Why use this actor

• Ready to analyse. One row per country-year, indices keyed by their V-Dem names (v2x_polyarchy, v2x_libdem, v2x_corr...), values rounded to V-Dem's three decimals.
• Regime type included. Each row says whether the country was a closed autocracy, electoral autocracy, electoral democracy or liberal democracy that year.
• Confidence bounds on request. Turn on includeConfidenceBounds to get <variable>_low and <variable>_high (V-Dem's 68% interval).
• Fast and light. Only the columns you ask for are downloaded. A typical run finishes in seconds.
• Country names or ISO codes. "Sweden", "USA" and "hun" all work.

Where the data comes from

V-Dem v16 (released March 2026) as republished by Our World in Data (dataset version 2026-03-17). OWID publishes the main V-Dem indices as open data; the official v-dem.net download asks for personal details before it hands out a file, which an automated tool should not fill in on your behalf. The trade-off: this actor covers the 64 indices OWID republishes, not every one of V-Dem's ~500 raw indicators.

Please cite both sources when you publish results: Coppedge et al., V-Dem Country-Year Dataset v16, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project, and Our World in Data.

How it works

1. You provide country names/ISO codes, years, and the V-Dem variables you want.

Input

Field	Type	Default	What it does
countries	array	all	Country names or ISO 3-letter codes.
years	array	all	Specific years, e.g. ["2025", "2024"].
yearFrom / yearTo	integer	-	A year range instead of a list.
variables	array	10 key indices	V-Dem variable names, index names, or "all".
includeConfidenceBounds	boolean	false	Adds _low / _high columns.
includeRegimeType	boolean	true	Adds regime (0-3) and regimeLabel.
includeRegions	boolean	false	Adds world and continent averages when no countries are named.
maxItems	integer	10000	Row cap. Rows come newest year first.

Example:

{
  "countries": ["Sweden", "United States", "Hungary"],
  "yearFrom": 2015,
  "variables": ["v2x_polyarchy", "v2x_libdem", "v2x_corr"],
  "includeConfidenceBounds": true
}

When variables is empty you get: v2x_polyarchy, v2x_libdem, v2x_partipdem, v2x_delibdem, v2x_egaldem, v2x_civlib, v2x_corr, v2x_rule, v2x_freexp_altinf, v2x_jucon.

Output

{
  "country": "Hungary",
  "countryCode": "HUN",
  "isRegion": false,
  "year": 2025,
  "regime": 1,
  "regimeLabel": "electoral autocracy",
  "v2x_polyarchy": 0.421,
  "v2x_polyarchy_low": 0.362,
  "v2x_polyarchy_high": 0.463,
  "v2x_libdem": 0.315,
  "v2x_corr": 0.488,
  "source": "V-Dem v16 via Our World in Data (2026-03-17)"
}

Most indices run from 0 (low) to 1 (high). Corruption indices are reversed: higher means more corrupt. A few V-Dem measurement-model scores (e.g. v2mebias, v2cacamps) are on a roughly -5 to 5 scale.

Available variables

Variable	Index
v2x_civlib	Civil liberties index
v2xcs_ccsi	Core civil society index
v2x_cspart	Civil society participation index
v2x_execorr	Executive corruption index
v2jucorrdc	Judicial corruption score
v2lgcrrpt	Legislative corruption score
v2x_pubcorr	Public sector corruption index
v2x_corr	Political corruption index
v2dlcountr	Respect for counterarguments
v2xdl_delib	Deliberative political institutions index
v2x_delibdem	Deliberative democracy index
v2svdomaut	Domestic policymaking free from foreign influence
v2x_egal	Egalitarian political institutions index
v2x_egaldem	Egalitarian democracy index
v2x_polyarchy	Electoral democracy index
v2xel_frefair	Clean elections index
v2dlconslt	Elite consultation
v2xeg_eqaccess	Equal access to power index
v2xeg_eqdr	Equal resource distribution index
v2xeg_eqprotec	Equal rights protection index
v2x_frassoc_thick	Freedom of association thick index
v2x_freexp_altinf	Freedom of expression and alternative sources of information index
v2xcl_rol	Equality before the law and individual liberty index
v2svinlaut	Foreign policymaking free from foreign influence
v2x_jucon	Judicial constraints on the executive index
v2dlcommon	Common good justifications
v2dlreason	Justified political positions
v2xlg_legcon	Legislative constraints on the executive index
v2x_liberal	Liberal component index
v2x_libdem	Liberal democracy index
v2xel_locelec	Elected local governments
v2x_partip	Participatory political institutions
v2x_partipdem	Participatory democracy index
v2xnp_pres	Presidentialism index
v2x_clphy	Physical violence index
v2x_clpol	Political civil liberties index
v2x_clpriv	Private civil liberties index
v2clrspct	Rigorous and impartial public administration
v2xel_regelec	Elected regional governments
v2x_rule	Rule of law index
v2dlengage	Engaged society
v2clsocgrp	Equality of civil liberties across social groups
v2pepwrsoc	Equality of political power across social groups
v2svstterr	Territory under state control
v2caautmob	Mass mobilization for autocracy
v2cacamps	Political polarization score
v2cademmob	Mass mobilization for democracy
v2cagenmob	Mass mobilization
v2caviol	Political violence by non-state actors
v2elvotbuy	Election vote buying
v2mebias	Media bias
v2mecenefm	Government censorship of the media
v2mecorrpt	Media corruption score
v2meharjrn	Journalist harassment
v2meslfcen	Self-censorship of the media
v2smgovdom	Government dissemination of false information domestic
v2xca_academ	Academic freedom index
v2xcl_prpty	Property rights
v2xnp_client	Clientelism index
v2x_gencl	Women's civil rights index
v2x_gencs	Women's civil society participation index
v2x_gender	Women's political empowerment index
v2lgfemleg	Lower chamber female legislators
v2x_genpp	Women's political participation index

Use cases

• Political risk and country screening for investment, supply chains or insurance.
• Academic and policy research: panel data for regressions, trend charts, before/after comparisons.
• Journalism: how a country's democracy scores moved after an election or a crackdown.
• Dashboards and AI agents that need a structured democracy measure per country.

FAQ

How current is it? V-Dem v16 covers up to 2025. V-Dem releases once a year (usually March); OWID follows within weeks, and the actor will move to the new release.

Can I get V-Dem variables that are not in the list? Not from this actor. Those are only in the official download from v-dem.net.

Are values identical to V-Dem's own files? Yes, OWID republishes V-Dem's estimates. Values here are rounded to three decimals.

For AI agents and LLM apps

Call the actor with countries, yearFrom/yearTo and variables and read the dataset: every row is flat JSON with stable keys (V-Dem variable names), so it drops straight into a table, a dataframe or a prompt.

Disclaimer

V-Dem data is published by the V-Dem Institute (University of Gothenburg) and republished by Our World in Data under CC BY. This actor is not affiliated with either. Cite the original sources when you use the data.