Completion of and Making Available the V-Dem Infrastructure
The infrastructure project proposed will make a unique infrastructure complete to enable cutting-edge research, and make it accessible through a state-of-the-art digital platform. The existing Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) infrastructure consists of six interrelated components: 1) specifically programmed Postgres database, 2) custom-designed FileMakerPro relational database, 3) a set of web-based coding and administrative interfaces, 4) a prototype public website, 5) network of over 2,500 scholars from more than 170 countries, and 6) staff at the V-Dem Institute with unique competencies. Together, these components make it possible to provide 350+ unique, disaggregated indicators, five distinct indices of democracy as well as 37 indices for various components of democracy. It ads up to 15mn data that are publicly available for download and online analysis. Today the infrastructure services data on only 173 countries from 1900 with partial coverage beyond 2012 and data is missing for 26 countries altogether. The proposed project will make the infrastructure complete with data for 1900-2019 for 185 countries, and develop the digital platform to include an intuitive set of interfaces for access to data, building of research networks, distribution of results, and easy-to-use tools for multiple forms of online analysis for users who are not proficient in statistical analysis.
Final report
1. Infrastrukturens syfte samt utveckling.
This project focuses on enabling cutting-edge social science research on critical issues of political, social, and economic development in the world. The project’s main goal was to make the V-Dem infrastructure complete in terms of world coverage (185 states and semi-sovereign countries) and time span (120 years). In terms of operational targets, this project was going to result in three main achievements:
1. Complete the V-Dem infrastructure with full data for the 12 of the 26 not yet covered countries for 1900-2019. Given that it would be very difficult, probably impossible, to get high-quality data for 14 of the 26 mostly microstates, the addition of the 12 countries would complete world-country coverage.
2. Supplement with data for 60 countries 2013-2109; and for 53 countries covering 2016-2019, in total 113 countries. This would ensure that the V-Dem infrastructure provides comprehensive, complete coverage of 120 years of data for all the 185 states, over 350+ indicators and 42 indices on democracy, rule of law, human rights, civil liberties, women’s empowerment, and related issues.
3. Based on the existing “bare bone” web platform for public access to data, online analysis tool, documentation of all parts of the data and processing, build a fully extended and much more user-friendly, high quality, and streamlined online platform. This will facilitate dissemination to a broad audience consisting of scholars, students, policy makers and other users that can stimulate further cross-institution research collaboration, and will also extend the availability of research findings and publications.
2. Projektets resultat hittills, och ett resonemang om dessa.
The V-Dem database now includes data for 183 countries across 1900-2020. During the course of this project, 10 countries have been added to the V-Dem database, these are: Bahrain, Luxemburg, Hong Kong, Equatorial Guinea, Kuwait, Oman, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Malta, and Zanzibar. This means that while we have achieved goal 1 almost fully, and goal 2 is achieved. See more details on point 4 below.
Goal 3 is also achieved but as always with development projects, the exact deliverables are typically modified during the project. For instance, we have introduced a large number of developments to the survey interface to make survey coding run smoother and faster, and to eliminate the risk of errors. We have developed the admin interfaces for managing everything related to the surveys and set up a new system for managing all survey questions as well as the codebook, which enables auto-generation of the codebook (previously manual work). This also lays the ground for a future selective data download function. The coding interface have been upgraded by new functions which for instance reduce the number of clicks per survey question, easier access to the surveys, a clearer and more user-friendly survey layout, made sure survey coders can see which questions remains to be coded and what they potentially have missed, among many other things.
We have also implemented a large number of back-end developments which were required to be able to implement many of the other changes as well as to develop new graphing tools. A set of six new graphing tools were created and already existing tools were updated to be state of the art in terms of presentation, speed, and user-friendliness. Updates of existing tools include various enhancements to the user interfaces, clearer access to indicator information, new feature to export graph data to CSV, faster graph generation, adjusted colors to address color blindness, among other things.
The following new graphing tools have been added and are now available at https://www.v-dem.net/en/online-graphing/:
Sequence and contingency tools:
1. Contingency Tables: this tool shows sequencing relationships between indicators in a selected category with a comparison between country and region.
2. Low Hanging Fruit Tool: this benchmarking tool can be especially useful to enhance the efficiency of operations and projects with a strong data-driven decision-making. The tool is based on novel sequencing methods, data analysis and scenario modeling, and can explain which indicators should be developed in order to reach progress in a selected category.
Variable Radar Chart:
Displays multiple variables and/or indices for one country over time in a form of a radar chart.
Country Radar Chart:
Displays multiple countries for one indicator/index in a radar chart.
Scatter Chart:
Displays one indicator/index in a scatter plot.
Heat Map:
Displays one indicator/index on a heat map.
New Chart Tools:
These tools make it possible to create even more detailed and nuanced charts, complex graphics and heat maps.
PART Forecasting tool (funded by other funding sources)
This tool provides an interactive dashboard for the Predicting Adverse Regime Transition project.
DemSpace forecasting tool (funded by other funding sources):
This tool estimates the probability that a country will experience at least one opening event (a substantial increase) or at least one closing event (a substantial decrease) over a two-year window (2019-2020) for six different aspects of a country's Democratic Space: associational, economic, electoral, governing, individual, and informational spaces.
PanDem Dashboard (funded by other funding sources):
The Pandemic Backsliding tool tracks state responses to Covid-19 and their potential effect on the overall quality of democracy within the country.
3. Kort om hur infrastrukturen använts samt vilken forskning som påbörjats med hjälp av infrastrukturen.
The infrastructure has been used to collect and update data for more than 180 countries over 2017-2020. Throughout the course of the project, we have added new indicators to the infrastructure, which means that we have been able to collect data across more than 450 indicators. The data is used by a large group of users, the V-Dem datasets have been downloaded more than 180,000 times since 2016 and the data have been cited more than 1,800 times (google scholar). The V-Dem website has had 429,000 unique visitors in total and 7 million graphs have been generated via the online tools.
4. Oförutsedda tekniska och metodiska problem, samt avvikelser från den ursprungliga planen
There has been no unforeseen technical problems during the course of the project. However, we have encountered challenges with fully reaching one the project goals. The project aimed to include 12 new countries, and have in total added 10 new countries. We tried hard to find the adequate country expertise for two additional countries, for instance Brunei, but it turned out to be impossible. The remaining countries are very small and highly understudied, it turned out to be very difficult to find country specialists with the requisite expertise across the survey themes V-Dem covers. We therefore adjusted the ambition and focused on filling expert gaps to existing countries. In the end, we added more experts than the application had suggested, including for the 10 new countries and for countries where we had missingness for specific years, countries and indicators. We have also added a large number of new surveys to the V-Dem database, for instance on ‘Civic and Academic Space’, ‘Party Identity and Organization’ and ‘Digital Society’, resulting in a large number of new indicators and data points. While we ended up with 183 countries instead of 185, the project funding was used to generate significantly more new data than originally proposed.
5. Arbetets integrering i myndigheten/organisationen, samt hur infrastrukturen ska underhållas långsiktigt
V-Dem is hosted by the department of political science, University of Gothenburg, where it is an integral part of the institutions and its activities. We are currently trying to secure long term funding for the infrastructure via the consortium Demscore, which is partly funded by the Research Council’s National Research Infrastructure grants.
6. Infrastrukturen tillgänglighet och förhållande till krav på öppen tillgänglighet och Open Science
All data and tools are provided open source, free of charge via the V-Dem website.
7. Eventuella internationella samarbeten.
In addition to a broad range of scholarly collaborations, collaborations include working with:
- UNDP on formulation and measurement of Goal 16 of the SDGs, as well as with reconceptualizing “human development” for the upcoming 2021 Human Development Report
- The World Bank for the World Development Report 2017
- EC/Devco and EEAS to help EU’s delegations that are required to use V-Dem data for their annual Risk Framework Assessments
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs-Sweden to start-up and provide resources for the new foreign policy priority “The Drive for Democracy”.
- V-Dem data are used for the: “World Governance Indicators”; International IDEA’s measures of “Global State of Democracy”; Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ democracy dialogues and assessments; Transparency International’s corruption measures; Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s Ibrahim Index of African Governance; and Article 19’s Index of Freedom of Expression.
- V-Dem data is frequently used in international media outlets such as New York Times, the Economist, TIME, and Washington Post.
8. Eventuella publikationer som tillkommit till följd av den forskning som bedrivits i anslutning till infrastrukturen.
A total of 114 working papers have been produced by the V-Dem scholars, all published open source on the V-Dem webpage. 53 peer reviewed publications have been published by V-Dem scholars. V-Dem is also publishing policy briefs, to date 26 available via the V-Dem webpage.
9. Länkar till egna webbsidor.
The V-Dem data and visualization tools can be found via www.v-dem.net
This project focuses on enabling cutting-edge social science research on critical issues of political, social, and economic development in the world. The project’s main goal was to make the V-Dem infrastructure complete in terms of world coverage (185 states and semi-sovereign countries) and time span (120 years). In terms of operational targets, this project was going to result in three main achievements:
1. Complete the V-Dem infrastructure with full data for the 12 of the 26 not yet covered countries for 1900-2019. Given that it would be very difficult, probably impossible, to get high-quality data for 14 of the 26 mostly microstates, the addition of the 12 countries would complete world-country coverage.
2. Supplement with data for 60 countries 2013-2109; and for 53 countries covering 2016-2019, in total 113 countries. This would ensure that the V-Dem infrastructure provides comprehensive, complete coverage of 120 years of data for all the 185 states, over 350+ indicators and 42 indices on democracy, rule of law, human rights, civil liberties, women’s empowerment, and related issues.
3. Based on the existing “bare bone” web platform for public access to data, online analysis tool, documentation of all parts of the data and processing, build a fully extended and much more user-friendly, high quality, and streamlined online platform. This will facilitate dissemination to a broad audience consisting of scholars, students, policy makers and other users that can stimulate further cross-institution research collaboration, and will also extend the availability of research findings and publications.
2. Projektets resultat hittills, och ett resonemang om dessa.
The V-Dem database now includes data for 183 countries across 1900-2020. During the course of this project, 10 countries have been added to the V-Dem database, these are: Bahrain, Luxemburg, Hong Kong, Equatorial Guinea, Kuwait, Oman, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Malta, and Zanzibar. This means that while we have achieved goal 1 almost fully, and goal 2 is achieved. See more details on point 4 below.
Goal 3 is also achieved but as always with development projects, the exact deliverables are typically modified during the project. For instance, we have introduced a large number of developments to the survey interface to make survey coding run smoother and faster, and to eliminate the risk of errors. We have developed the admin interfaces for managing everything related to the surveys and set up a new system for managing all survey questions as well as the codebook, which enables auto-generation of the codebook (previously manual work). This also lays the ground for a future selective data download function. The coding interface have been upgraded by new functions which for instance reduce the number of clicks per survey question, easier access to the surveys, a clearer and more user-friendly survey layout, made sure survey coders can see which questions remains to be coded and what they potentially have missed, among many other things.
We have also implemented a large number of back-end developments which were required to be able to implement many of the other changes as well as to develop new graphing tools. A set of six new graphing tools were created and already existing tools were updated to be state of the art in terms of presentation, speed, and user-friendliness. Updates of existing tools include various enhancements to the user interfaces, clearer access to indicator information, new feature to export graph data to CSV, faster graph generation, adjusted colors to address color blindness, among other things.
The following new graphing tools have been added and are now available at https://www.v-dem.net/en/online-graphing/:
Sequence and contingency tools:
1. Contingency Tables: this tool shows sequencing relationships between indicators in a selected category with a comparison between country and region.
2. Low Hanging Fruit Tool: this benchmarking tool can be especially useful to enhance the efficiency of operations and projects with a strong data-driven decision-making. The tool is based on novel sequencing methods, data analysis and scenario modeling, and can explain which indicators should be developed in order to reach progress in a selected category.
Variable Radar Chart:
Displays multiple variables and/or indices for one country over time in a form of a radar chart.
Country Radar Chart:
Displays multiple countries for one indicator/index in a radar chart.
Scatter Chart:
Displays one indicator/index in a scatter plot.
Heat Map:
Displays one indicator/index on a heat map.
New Chart Tools:
These tools make it possible to create even more detailed and nuanced charts, complex graphics and heat maps.
PART Forecasting tool (funded by other funding sources)
This tool provides an interactive dashboard for the Predicting Adverse Regime Transition project.
DemSpace forecasting tool (funded by other funding sources):
This tool estimates the probability that a country will experience at least one opening event (a substantial increase) or at least one closing event (a substantial decrease) over a two-year window (2019-2020) for six different aspects of a country's Democratic Space: associational, economic, electoral, governing, individual, and informational spaces.
PanDem Dashboard (funded by other funding sources):
The Pandemic Backsliding tool tracks state responses to Covid-19 and their potential effect on the overall quality of democracy within the country.
3. Kort om hur infrastrukturen använts samt vilken forskning som påbörjats med hjälp av infrastrukturen.
The infrastructure has been used to collect and update data for more than 180 countries over 2017-2020. Throughout the course of the project, we have added new indicators to the infrastructure, which means that we have been able to collect data across more than 450 indicators. The data is used by a large group of users, the V-Dem datasets have been downloaded more than 180,000 times since 2016 and the data have been cited more than 1,800 times (google scholar). The V-Dem website has had 429,000 unique visitors in total and 7 million graphs have been generated via the online tools.
4. Oförutsedda tekniska och metodiska problem, samt avvikelser från den ursprungliga planen
There has been no unforeseen technical problems during the course of the project. However, we have encountered challenges with fully reaching one the project goals. The project aimed to include 12 new countries, and have in total added 10 new countries. We tried hard to find the adequate country expertise for two additional countries, for instance Brunei, but it turned out to be impossible. The remaining countries are very small and highly understudied, it turned out to be very difficult to find country specialists with the requisite expertise across the survey themes V-Dem covers. We therefore adjusted the ambition and focused on filling expert gaps to existing countries. In the end, we added more experts than the application had suggested, including for the 10 new countries and for countries where we had missingness for specific years, countries and indicators. We have also added a large number of new surveys to the V-Dem database, for instance on ‘Civic and Academic Space’, ‘Party Identity and Organization’ and ‘Digital Society’, resulting in a large number of new indicators and data points. While we ended up with 183 countries instead of 185, the project funding was used to generate significantly more new data than originally proposed.
5. Arbetets integrering i myndigheten/organisationen, samt hur infrastrukturen ska underhållas långsiktigt
V-Dem is hosted by the department of political science, University of Gothenburg, where it is an integral part of the institutions and its activities. We are currently trying to secure long term funding for the infrastructure via the consortium Demscore, which is partly funded by the Research Council’s National Research Infrastructure grants.
6. Infrastrukturen tillgänglighet och förhållande till krav på öppen tillgänglighet och Open Science
All data and tools are provided open source, free of charge via the V-Dem website.
7. Eventuella internationella samarbeten.
In addition to a broad range of scholarly collaborations, collaborations include working with:
- UNDP on formulation and measurement of Goal 16 of the SDGs, as well as with reconceptualizing “human development” for the upcoming 2021 Human Development Report
- The World Bank for the World Development Report 2017
- EC/Devco and EEAS to help EU’s delegations that are required to use V-Dem data for their annual Risk Framework Assessments
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs-Sweden to start-up and provide resources for the new foreign policy priority “The Drive for Democracy”.
- V-Dem data are used for the: “World Governance Indicators”; International IDEA’s measures of “Global State of Democracy”; Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ democracy dialogues and assessments; Transparency International’s corruption measures; Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s Ibrahim Index of African Governance; and Article 19’s Index of Freedom of Expression.
- V-Dem data is frequently used in international media outlets such as New York Times, the Economist, TIME, and Washington Post.
8. Eventuella publikationer som tillkommit till följd av den forskning som bedrivits i anslutning till infrastrukturen.
A total of 114 working papers have been produced by the V-Dem scholars, all published open source on the V-Dem webpage. 53 peer reviewed publications have been published by V-Dem scholars. V-Dem is also publishing policy briefs, to date 26 available via the V-Dem webpage.
9. Länkar till egna webbsidor.
The V-Dem data and visualization tools can be found via www.v-dem.net