It no longer functions as a check on executive power,” Lindberg says. When Lindberg, a soft-spoken political scientist, founded the V-Dem Institute in 2012, global democracy was near its historic peak. Five years later, when the institute published its first dataset of global democracy, its experts realised that things were rapidly going in the wrong direction. At the time, their reports were criticised for “exaggerating” the risks to global democratic stability. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Estonia and Ireland top V-Dem’s global democracy index for 2025.

Source: The Guardian March 17, 2026 19:20 UTC