Democracy in decline: 72% of the world's population lives in autocracies

BarcelonaThese are not good times for democracy. Two facts from 2024 exemplify this: autocracies made the overtaking in democracies last year (this hadn't happened since 2002) and now there are 88 compared to 91; this means that 72% of the world's population lives in non-democratic regimes. This is indicated by the 2025 Varieties of Democracies (V-Dem) report, entitled Democracy Report: 25 years of autocratization-Democracy Trumped?, one of the most prestigious studies of this area to measure the level of democracy in the world and prepared by the Swedish University of Gothenburg.

The report analyzes countries based on the quality of their governance and establishes up to four different categories: liberal democracy (the system with the highest ratings in terms of rights and freedoms), electoral democracy (which is considered a democracy, but of lower quality), electoral autocracy (there are elections, but no multi-party system and no freedoms). "This is the first time since 2002 that there are more autocracies than democracies in the world [...]. And democracies are becoming less democratic," the report states bluntly, adding that autocracies have also become more rigid. "There is a growth of the worst in both worlds," it exemplifies. In fact, only 12% of the world's population lives in democracies that are considered full, including Spain, the lowest percentage in fifty years. In other words, democratic regimes are the least common in the world.

These systems are basically concentrated in Europe, Australia and North America. The worst region for rights and freedoms is the Middle East and North Africa, where 98% of the population lives in an autocracy. The remaining 2% is in Israel, although it fell from the highest category of democracy in 2023, amidst the conflict with Palestine. Among democracies, South Korea, Bhutan, the United Kingdom, and Suriname (all electoral democracies) lost points; and among existing autocracies, Indonesia, Mongolia, Georgia, Belarus, Gabon, Niger, and Lebanon fell behind. Periods of autocratization are also recorded in India, Hungary, Bangladesh, Ukraine, and Mauritania, already classified as electoral autocracies.

The aspects that have regressed the most in all regimes are freedom of expression (it has gone backwards in 44 countries), which has resulted in less freedom of the press –also in consolidated democracies–, security for journalists and political freedom to deliberate on the part of public opinion and deliberation, which has opinion and deliberation, government, and has regressed in 27 countries and has only improved in eight.

The case of the United States

The outlook for the next report is also bleak. The study was completed just as Donald Trump took office as president of the United States, and therefore does not reflect the effect of his policies on the quality of American democracy, which is indexed within the group of most democratic countries. Nor is it included on the list of states V-Dem is targeting in 2025 as regimes that tend to be more autocratic, which does include Cyprus, Madagascar, Namibia, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Togo. However, the report does make special mention of the United States, questioning whether the country is heading toward a "democratic breakdown" and warning that in 2025 it could experience a process of deterioration of its system due to Trump's policies, which he points out already deteriorated American democracy during his first term. In this regard, the report cites the most controversial aspects that could lead to this setback: the predominance of the executive branch over Congress, "attacks" on the rule of law, changes in the military leadership, intimidation of the press, and the initiative piloted by Elon Musk to dismantle part of the administration (DOGE).