2026-03-23 · percent of countries
Authoritarian regimes remain numerous
Closed politics persists across regions.
About one in six countries — 16% — carries an authoritarian rating in the latest EIU democracy scores, and closed politics persists across regions: the grid's bands put Asia & Pacific at 43.7%, Africa at 23.5%, and the Americas at 16.8% (excluding the spotlight). The stakes are real — democracies tend to be better governed, grow faster, and are more peaceful — yet more people live without democratic rights today than ever before.
1 cell = 0.1 percent of countries (0.1% of country count) · 1,000 cells
Context
Measures disagree on where to draw the line. Our World in Data's Regimes of the World classification puts the world near an even split between autocracies and democracies, with most non-democracies classed as electoral autocracies — systems that hold elections but lack the freedoms of association and expression that make them meaningful.
The concentration is global. Our World in Data points to countries such as China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, where citizens cannot choose their leaders in popular elections, while many states in Africa and Asia sit in between — leaders are elected, but rights to associate and speak are limited and elections fall short of free and fair.
Backsliding is recent and large. The Regimes of the World data reclassified India, home to 1.4 billion people, as an electoral autocracy in 2017, and because population growth has outpaced democracy's spread, the number of people without democratic rights is higher than ever. Many democracies, for their part, are less than a generation old.
Economist Intelligence Unit democracy scores via OWID.
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Credit this grid as Inagrid — https://inagrid.com/e/2026-03-23-pol-democracy-authoritarian