Judicial checks on government

How this is measured

Whether the high court and lower courts are independent, whether the executive complies with judgments against it, and how far judges can be removed at will. This is usually the first thing to move when a democracy erodes, which makes it worth watching against the electoral democracy index rather than instead of it. Because it is coded by country experts and then put through a measurement model, every value is an estimate with a credible interval around it. V-Dem publishes those intervals; this site shows only the point estimate, so how firm any single number is cannot be read off the screen. The intervals are wider where fewer experts coded a country and in the earlier centuries, which is exactly where the long series is most tempting to read closely.

163 countries and territories have a figure for 2025. This is the most recent year the series covers well; the viewer holds every year from 1789.

Data by year

Source and licence

Other government statistics