V-Dem Updated Dataset 7.1

About V-Dem:

The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) is a worldwide collaboration of almost 3,000 scholars and experts, measuring democracy from a new, multidimensional, point of view. V-Dem is headquartered at the V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg and co-hosted by the Kellogg institute at the University of Notre Dame, USA. V-Dem dataset is the largest of its kind and the most comprehensive database on democracy, enabling a vast research agenda and nuanced descriptive analyses that are comparable across time and space.

Performing data updates is an integral part of our data quality strategy. We are pleased to announce the release of the updated dataset – version 7.1!

What’s New in Dataset 7.1

New indices and indicators

Accountability index (v2x_accountability)
Vertical accountability index (v2x_veracc)
Horizontal accountability index (v2x_horacc)
Diagonal accountability index (v2x_diagacc)

Modified indices and indicators

Errors with E type variables in version 7 have been fixed.
HOS and HOG appointment in practice variables (v2expathhs, v2expathhg) in the Country Year dataset have been corrected to be aggregated by the last observation within a year.

Other new or modified information

The issue in Dataset v7 with identifiers for the main country coded by experts has been fixed.
Versions of Male suffrage (v2msuffrage), Female suffrage (v2fsuffrage) and Suffrage (v2asuffrage) into executive (*_ex) or legislative (*_leg) elections have been dropped from the dataset, since the original variables are not election specific.
Convergence problems with Vertical accountability index (v2x_veracc), please see Cautionary Notes for further details.

Overview of V-Dem Dataset 7.1

Dataset is free and available for download in the following formats: SPSS, STATA, STATA-IC, CSV, and EXCEL
Dataset is available as Country-Year: V-Dem; Country-Year: V-Dem + other; Country-Date: V-Dem
177 Countries

To download the new dataset, please visit our website

The download file also includes Codebook (version 7.1), “What is New and Cautionary Note”, a list of other useful V-Dem project documents, and a “How to Cite” document.