UofL Libraries: POLS 495: Democratization (Ziegler): Data & Statistics

Why Data & Statistics

This page provides featured democracy measures, public opinion, and other popular sites for quantitative and qualitative information that can provide context and a rationale for your research.

As you'll see, many of these sources have information that cover not just democracy and democratization, but address other relevant topics such as authoritarianism; religion; and other factors that can assist in your comparison of forms of government between the United States and the other country you choose to research.

Featured Democracy Measures

Polity IV Individual Country Regime Trends, 1946-2013
Tracks changes in the political structure of 167 countries since 1946.
Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI)
"The project focuses on the global and comparative analysis of transformation processes for constitutional democracy and social policy flanked market economy. The Transformation Index BTI, a biennial appearing ranking the quality of democracy, market economy and political achievements in 129 countries, brings together the results." Read more here about the BTI's goals, and access BTI for country reports, rankings, and their archive.
Freedom House
"Freedom in the World, Freedom House's flagship publication, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. Published annually since 1972, the survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and 15 related and disputed territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders." (Freedom House)

Public Opinion

Pew Research Center
World Value Survey
The WVS conducts surveys in nearly 100 studies, gathering data on people's beliefs and values since 1981.
World Public Opinion
Started and maintained by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, WPO provides data from public opinion polls around the world.

Related Resources

Political Science Research Guide