About
The World Democracy Monitor (WDM) tracks the structural health of democratic institutions worldwide. Using evidence from V-Dem, Freedom House, CIVICUS, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, IPI, RSF, OSCE/ODIHR, and International IDEA, WDM measures erosion, resilience, and state capture — distinguishing transient episodes from persistent decay, and identifying the legislative mimicry chains by which illiberal governance practices spread across jurisdictions.
WDM organises countries into three tiers: Rapid Decay (confirmed or probable structural erosion), Recovery (positive trajectory away from prior erosion), and Watchlist (elevated risk indicators, below the decay threshold). Each tier entry carries a severity score, confidence rating, and version history updated weekly.
New issues are published every Monday at 06:00 UTC. The full brief is published on the Asymmetric Intelligence platform at asym-intel.info/monitors/democratic-integrity/. This monitor dashboard renders the latest data file and provides an interactive view of the persistent knowledge base.
Peter Howitt — Gibraltar. Published via asym-intel.info.
- WDM Methodology Sources, heatmap tiers, integrity flag definitions, and mimicry chain methodology.
- All WDM Briefs Full weekly briefs on the Asymmetric Intelligence platform.
- All Monitors Asymmetric Intelligence monitor suite — conflict, governance, AI, FIMI, environment, and more.
- asym-intel.info Asymmetric Intelligence main platform.
This monitor dashboard was built with Perplexity Computer.
The World Democracy Monitor focuses on the structural health of democratic institutions — not individual political events. It tracks erosion in electoral integrity, judicial independence, civil society space, press freedom, and legislative process. WDM distinguishes between transient episodes (events with clear temporal boundaries), persistent conditions (sustained structural changes), and watchlist signals (indicators that may cross the decay threshold).
WDM does not rate overall governance quality. A country may score poorly on development or corruption indices while remaining democratically healthy; conversely, a country with strong economic metrics may be undergoing significant democratic regression. WDM tracks the democratic dimension specifically.
WDM draws on a curated set of primary and institutional sources with established methodologies:
- V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) — The primary academic framework. Provides the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI), electoral autocracy classifications, and autocratizing country identification. Used for baseline scoring and trend direction.
- Freedom House — Annual Freedom in the World report. Provides country-level freedom scores (Free / Partly Free / Not Free) and aggregate point changes. Used to confirm or qualify V-Dem findings, especially in hybrid contexts.
- CIVICUS Monitor — Civic space ratings (Open / Narrowed / Obstructed / Repressed / Closed) and real-time alerts on civil society restrictions. Primary source for civic space tier assessments.
- Amnesty International — Country reports and emergency alerts. Used for institutional repression documentation, political detention, and judicial misuse.
- Human Rights Watch — Country reports, thematic investigations. Used alongside Amnesty for cross-verification of repression events.
- International Press Institute (IPI) — Media freedom alerts and the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MJRC) system. Primary source for press freedom and public broadcaster independence assessments.
- Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) — Annual World Press Freedom Index rankings. Used for press freedom trend signals and journalist safety data.
- OSCE/ODIHR — Election observation mission reports and Rapporteur mechanisms (including the Moscow Mechanism). Primary source for electoral integrity assessments and formal findings on democratic backsliding.
- International IDEA — Global State of Democracy reports and electoral risk monitoring. Used for systemic assessments and comparative democratic health analysis.
WDM maintains a three-tier country heatmap updated weekly:
Institutional integrity flags track sustained threats to specific democratic institutions — courts, broadcasters, electoral commissions, civil society frameworks — that persist across multiple weekly issues. Unlike heatmap entries (which are country-level), integrity flags are institution-level: they track what is happening to a specific body over time.
Each flag carries a first_raised date, an unchanged_since date (the last time material new information was added), and a flag_type classification: capture (political takeover), restriction (operational constraints), replacement (dissolution and substitution), or lawfare (use of legal mechanisms against the institution or its officials).
Mimicry chains document the deliberate adoption of legislative or regulatory templates across jurisdictions. When a law restricting civil society, press freedom, or judicial independence is enacted in one country and subsequently adopted in modified form by others, WDM maps the chain to make the pattern visible.
Each chain identifies a template law (the originating instrument), an origin country, and a sequence of adopter nodes with the adopting law and year. Mimicry chains are analytical constructs — they document structural similarity, not necessarily formal coordination. Where coordination evidence exists, it is noted in the chain detail.