Talk:V-Dem Democracy Indices

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Material from V-Dem Institute was split to V-Dem Democracy indices on 05:14, 10 February 2023 from this version. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted so long as the latter page exists. Please leave this template in place to link the article histories and preserve this attribution. The former page's talk page can be accessed at Talk:V-Dem Institute.

HudecEmil (talk) 12:14, 25 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Regimes of the World map and description by KlayCax are interesting, but I don't think this belongs into this article since the data are not published by V-Dem Institute. Suggest moving them to Our World in Data or List of democracy indices. HudecEmil (talk) 19:42, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regimes of the World data is published by V-DEM: In some of our work on democracy, we rely on the Regimes of the World (RoW) data by political scientists Anna Lührmann, Marcus Tannenberg, and Staffan Lindberg, published by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project. It's an alterative for the Polity data series. @HudecEmil:. KlayCax (talk) 00:16, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I see. I found the journal article, but can't find the dataset on V-Dem website. I think the prominent mention of "Our World In Data" confused me. HudecEmil (talk) 10:11, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, the page features a custom image that shows a map of the V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index (EDI) and states that the EDI "is part of all the other indices as a central component of democracy" and is listed first among the other four indices. Furthermore, each other index states that their concepts are also included in the EDI. These factors create the impression on the page that the EDI collects all the data from the other indices and collates it into a "final score" on the state of democracy, and that the EDI is a sort of 'superior' index that includes information from the other four.

However, after reading actual V-Dem reports my understanding is the opposite and that the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) is the index that includes all the information from the other indices for a "final score" on the state of democracy in a country. The LDI also provides named rankings for the state democracy in countries, these being "Liberal Democracy" "Electoral Democracy" "Electoral Autocracy" and "Closed Autocracy". This information is not mentioned on the page.

With this information, should the page be rewritten to state that the LDI collects the information from the other four indices into its final score? Likewise, should the image provided in the article be based on the LDI score instead of the EDI score and the rankings of countries based on their LDI score also be included?

I would make this change, but I wanted to bring this to the attention of others beforehand in case someone more versed in this topic can correct me or if I am missing some big piece of the puzzle. BootsED (talk) 02:10, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is discussed more in V-dem Methodology. In short: V-Dem intentionally does not have one "final score" since their approach is about Varieties. There are 5 main Indices showing these main varieties, but only 2 are mainly discussed in the V-Dem Report. These 2 represent the minimalist and maximalist definitions of democracy. The EDI is calculated from a larger set of sub-components. The LDI is calculated from combining "only" EDI and liberal component (shown in table), more in V-Dem Codebook. I think a map of LDI would make sense in addition to the map of EDI, but not instead of. The LDI ranking is already implemented, when sorting the LDI column the countries are automatically ranked by LDI. HudecEmil (talk) 18:14, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification! I agree then, an LDI map and more specificity about the EDI versus LDI and updated descriptions of the difference between the two to aid individuals like myself would be very helpful. BootsED (talk) 18:21, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]