The V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg has published its latest annual assessment of the state of democracy worldwide, covering developments through 2025. The report concludes that democracy for the average person in the world has fallen back to the level of 1978. The gains of the third wave of democratization since the mid 1970s “are almost eradicated”, the report says.
According to V-Dem researchers, the United States has lost its long standing status as a liberal democracy for the first time in more than 50 years, falling into the lower category of electoral democracy.
Autocracies remain in the majority
For the second year in a row, autocracies overall continue to outnumber democracies. The gap widened slightly in 2025: the number of autocracies rose from 91 to 92, while the number of democracies fell from 88 to 87. Among the 179 countries covered in the assessment, V-Dem now counts 57 electoral autocracies and 35 closed autocracies as well as 31 liberal democracies and 56 electoral democracies.
Four of the five most populous countries in the world are among the autocracies: India, China, Indonesia and Pakistan. The institute estimates that 74 percent of the world’s population, around 6 billion people, now live in autocracies, while only 26 percent live in democracies. Just 7 percent of the world population, around 600 million people, live in liberal democracies. There are now more people living in closed autocracies than in electoral and liberal democracies combined, the report notes.
Wave of autocratization continues
The report identifies 44 countries as currently autocratizing, up from 42 in the previous edition. These countries are home to 41 percent of the world’s population, a record high for the current wave of autocratization. By contrast, only 18 countries are democratizing, and they account for just 5 percent of the world’s population. Three new democratizers identified in the report are Botswana, Guatemala, and Mauritius.
The ten new autocratizers identified in 2025 are Cambodia, Croatia, Italy, Kuwait, Madagascar, Slovakia, Slovenia, Togo, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Among the 44 current autocratizers, 28 were democracies when decline began, and 15 of them have already broken down and slipped into autocracy, V-Dem finds. V-Dem says the world has never before seen so many countries autocratizing at the same time.
Freedom of expression is the hardest hit area, worsening in 44 countries in 2025. Torture is increasingly used to suppress political opposition in 33 countries. V-Dem also highlights media censorship and repression of civil society as central tools of autocratization. Government censorship of the media now affects 32 of the 44 autocratizing countries, while repression of civil society affects 30.
Regime shifts
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Zambia moved from electoral democracy to electoral autocracy in V-Dem’s assessment, while Guyana, Mongolia, and Nigeria improved from electoral autocracy to electoral democracy. Guinea-Bissau worsened from electoral autocracy to closed autocracy. V-Dem notes that some countries are close to the threshold between regime categories, which makes classifications less certain in these cases.
The report devotes an extra section to the developments in the United States which was downgraded from liberal democracy to electoral democracy. V-Dem says democracy in the USA has fallen back to the level of 1965 and describes the speed of democratic decline under Donald Trump’s second presidency as “unprecedented in modern history”. The institute points to “legislative constraints” as the “worst affected” aspect of US democracy which reached “its lowest point in over 100 years”.
Watchlist cases
The report includes a “watchlist” that identifies countries that appear to be close to entering new episodes of democratic decline or further autocratization. Bulgaria, Cyprus, Namibia, Portugal and Vanuatu are noted to be at risk of democratic erosion, while Russia, Sierra Leone and Sudan may head towards further autocratization. Chad, Gabon and South Korea are identified as potential democratizers.
