Report by International IDEA: “The findings of the 2026 Global State of Democracy (GSoD) report reflect what the Institute for Economics and Peace has called a “Great Fragmentation” (IEP 2026: 2) of historical alliances and partnerships, compounding a long-standing climate of radical uncertainty (Casas-Zamora 2024). As historical political alliances are questioned, new blocs emerge, and safety and security wane around the world, democracies are struggling to lead the way ahead in a decisive and authoritative manner.
Notably, one of the clearest trends in the Global State of Democracy Indices dataset is stagnation: in 81 percent of cases in which shifts at the factor1 level were possible, there was no change in countries’ performance. Since current levels of performance are largely middling, with most countries continuing to be clustered in the mid- and low-performance ranges across all categories, this stagnation is concerning. The relative dominance of mid-range performance is particularly worrying because it suggests that many countries remain in politically fragile “in-between” conditions. As discussed in Part 2, such contexts, especially those at the lower end of the mid-range band, are associated with heightened risks of instability and conflict (Gleditsch et al. 2009).
When change in the quality of democracy did occur, it was more often negative than positive. In 2025, 98 countries—representing 57 percent of all countries assessed—suffered a decline in at least one factor of democratic performance compared with their own performance five years earlier. In contrast, only 55 countries (32 percent) advanced in at least one factor over that period.2 This represents a substantial shift compared with a decade earlier: in 2015, 31 percent of all countries experienced at least one decline, and 27 percent saw at least one improvement. In 2025, deterioration was concentrated across many of the fundamental building blocks of democratic systems—credible elections, effective legislatures, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and access to a fair legal system in the pursuit of justice.
The most extensive global decline occurred in Freedom of Expression, which impacted 42 countries (24 percent of all countries in the dataset). This was followed closely by Freedom of the Press, whose scores fell in 23 percent of countries, and Access to Justice, which declined in 18 percent of countries. Much of the deterioration is rooted in coups, conflict, and the centralization of power, and the ongoing challenges affecting some of the most fundamental aspects of democratic governance raise questions about the extent to which the mechanisms relied upon to channel public priorities into policy remain fit for purpose…(More)”.
