US democracy score drops 24% in a single year, falling from 20th to 51st globally

The United States experienced the fastest democratic decline ever recorded for an established democracy in 2025, according to the 2026 Democracy Report from the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg. In a single year, the country's score on the Liberal Democracy Index fell 24%, and its global ranking dropped from 20th to 51st out of 179 nations.

That finding sits within a broader and equally troubling pattern. Nearly a quarter of the world's nations are now undergoing what political scientists call autocratization - a sustained erosion of democratic norms and institutions. Six of the ten countries newly identified as autocratizing in the 2026 report are in Europe and North America, including Italy and the United Kingdom alongside the United States.

Three currents pulling in the same direction

The report, authored by a team led by Professor Staffan I Lindberg, identifies three distinct patterns driving the global democratic recession. The first is the backsliding of traditionally stable democracies - countries long considered immune to the kind of institutional erosion seen in younger or more fragile political systems. The second is the reversal or outright collapse of democracy in countries that had successfully democratized during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The third is the deepening of autocratic control in states that were already authoritarian.

Of these, the first pattern may be the most consequential. When large, wealthy democracies weaken, the effects ripple outward. These countries shape international organizations, trade agreements, and the norms that govern global politics. Their institutional credibility - or the loss of it - carries weight far beyond their own borders.

Freedom of expression takes the hardest hit

Across all autocratizing countries, freedom of expression shows the most severe decline. Over the past 25 years, it has been the single most common target for leaders engaged in democratic backsliding. The pattern is consistent: restrictions on press freedom, attacks on academic independence, and pressure on civil society organizations tend to precede assaults on other democratic institutions.

The second most common target is what the V-Dem framework calls the liberal components of democracy - rule of law, checks and balances, and institutional constraints on executive power. Rule of law is currently deteriorating in 22 countries, including the United States.

The speed of the American decline

What distinguishes the US case is velocity. Other democracies have experienced democratic erosion - Hungary, Turkey, and India are well-documented examples - but none has seen such a dramatic single-year drop in a comprehensive democracy index. The liberal aspects of democracy account for the largest share of the decline, driven by what the report describes as a rapid concentration of powers in the presidency.

The report documents specific mechanisms: the undercutting of institutional checks and balances, politicization of civil service and oversight bodies, judicial intimidation, and attacks on press, academia, and dissenting voices. Because election-specific indicators are only evaluated during national election years, the 2025 data does not yet capture potential changes to electoral integrity - meaning the measured decline reflects institutional erosion alone, without accounting for any electoral deterioration.

The 2026 midterm elections, Lindberg notes, will serve as a critical test. If election indicators also decline, the US ranking would fall still further.

The weight of large nations

The report emphasizes that the sheer size and influence of the countries now experiencing backsliding amplifies the global impact. The United States, Italy, and the United Kingdom are not peripheral players in international politics. Their economic weight, military capabilities, and roles in multilateral institutions mean that domestic democratic erosion in these countries can reshape the international order.

This is not a theoretical concern. Trade agreements, diplomatic norms, and the enforcement of international law all depend on the institutional credibility of major democracies. When those institutions weaken at home, their ability to uphold standards abroad weakens as well.

Bright spots in a dark landscape

The picture is not uniformly bleak. The report identifies 18 nations - roughly 10% of those studied - currently undergoing democratization. Brazil and Poland continue multiyear democratization trajectories. Botswana, Guatemala, and Mauritius are newly identified as democratizing in the 2025 data. In the majority of these countries, media freedom has improved.

But these gains are modest relative to the scale of the erosion elsewhere. The countries democratizing tend to be smaller and less geopolitically influential than those backsliding, limiting their capacity to counterbalance the broader trend.

What the data can and cannot tell us

V-Dem's dataset is the largest global dataset on democracy, covering 202 countries from 1789 to 2025 and drawing on the expertise of more than 4,200 scholars and country experts. Its breadth and historical depth make it uniquely positioned to identify long-term trends. But like any index, it involves judgment calls about how to weigh different components of democracy, and its ratings can lag behind rapidly evolving situations on the ground.

The report's authors are explicit about the limitations: a single year's data point, no matter how dramatic, does not by itself constitute a permanent shift. Democracies can recover. Institutional damage can sometimes be reversed. But the speed and scale of the current decline - particularly in countries with deep democratic traditions - is, in the institute's assessment, without modern precedent.