Regimes of the World, a study by Anna Luhrmann, Marcus Tannenberg, and Staffan I. Lindberg, sets out four core categories of political systems: liberal democracy, electoral democracy, electoral autocracy, and closed autocracy. The position a political system holds on this spectrum is dependant on how its power is acquired, exercised, and constrained.
The map below shows where each country sits on the spectrum, based on data from the Electoral Democracy Index 2024. Few states sit at the extremes, with most combining elements of competition and control, shifting over time in response to political stress, economic performance, or elite incentives.
As you can see from the chart below (published by Our World in Data and based on data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project), the world was on a trajectory towards liberal democracy until around 2016, where the trajectory began turning back towards autocracy.
This article will define and provide real-world examples of each of these regime types.
