Democracy under pressure
The Global State of Democracy 2025: Democracy on the Move, released by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), found that 94 countries — representing 54 percent of all nations assessed — suffered a decline in at least one factor of democratic performance when comparing 2024 to 2019. In contrast, only 55 countries (32 percent) showed advances during the same period.
Key findings
The report's most alarming finding centres on press freedom, which experienced the broadest decline since data collection began in 1975. Performance in Freedom of the Press deteriorated in 43 countries, nearly one quarter of those covered, signalling what the report calls "a serious threat to public accountability and informed political participation. A unique focus of this year's report examines the intersection of global migration and democracy. With 304 million people — 3.7 percent of the world's population—now living outside their country of birth, migration has emerged as what the report calls "a key factor contributing to the current climate of uncertainty."
Democratic Performance by Category
The report organises democratic performance into four core categories:
Representation: Despite being the strongest-performing category overall, with 47 countries achieving high scores, Representation fell to its lowest global level since 2001. In the 2024 "super-cycle" election year, seven times more countries declined than advanced in this category.
Rule of Law: This remained the weakest-performing category, with 71 countries (41 percent) categorized as low-performing. Declines were most concentrated in Judicial Independence, with European countries accounting for 38 percent of all downturns.
Rights: The report documented extensive global declines in civil liberties, particularly Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Expression, alongside deterioration in Economic Equality and Access to Justice.
Participation: This category remained relatively stable, with only 11 countries experiencing notable changes. However, declines outweighed advances nine to two, mostly affecting already low-performing countries.
Looking Forward
The report emphasises that democracy requires "patience, maintenance and, at times, reinvention." It offers policymakers guidance on crafting inclusive policies for non-resident nationals and fostering political participation across borders. Despite the concerning trends, the report identifies signs of resilience, particularly in countries where elections have brought democratic renewal and where civil society remains active in holding governments accountable.
The Global State of Democracy 2025 report is based on International IDEA's Global State of Democracy Indices, which track democratic performance across 173 countries from 1975 to 2024, aggregating data from 22 sources into over 1.6 million data points.
Download the full report here.
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