In this session, Staffan Lindberg, Director of the V-Dem Institute, spoke on the latest global trends for democracy and autocracy based on V-Dem's just released Democracy Report 2024: Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot. The dataset for this report covers the world up until the end of 2023 and provides analyses of movement up and down on V-Dem's Liberal Democracy Index. Among other conclusions, the report finds that that the level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen is at the same level as it was in 1985. V-Dem estimates that 42 countries are autocratizing while only 18 moved upwards on the democracy index. Despite these concerning results, V-Dem finds an increase in "bright spots" - countries making a U-turn on a previous path of autocratization.
Recording here
PowerPoint slides here.