Democratic Erosion Events in 135 Countries 2000-2023

Over 135 countries between 2000 and 2023 are covered by this dataset tracking monthly events related to democratic backsliding and authoritarian consolidation. It classifies events into an analytical framework, providing narrative descriptions and coding for actors and targets involved in each event. The dataset is authored by Jessica Gottlieb and hosted by Harvard Dataverse.

Use Cases

• Analyze the frequency and types of monthly events classified within the democratic erosion framework to identify global backsliding trends.
• Map the relationships between coded actors and targets across over 135 countries to study networks of democratic resistance and consolidation.
• Use the narrative descriptions of events to train NLP models for automated classification of democratic erosion precursors and symptoms.
• Conduct longitudinal analysis of event sequences from 2000 to 2023 to model the progression of authoritarian consolidation in specific regions.

Strengths

• Covers a broad spatial scope of over 135 countries.
• Provides a long temporal coverage from 2000 to 2023.
• Includes structured analytical classification alongside narrative descriptions for each event.
• Codes specific data features such as actors and targets for relational analysis.

Limitations

• The specific number of events (rows) and variables (columns) is unknown, limiting precise assessment of scale and granularity.
• Relies on manual coding and classification of complex political events, which may introduce subjective interpretation or coder bias.
• The update frequency is not specified, so data may not include the most recent events post-2023.

Provenance

Source

Harvard Dataverse

Collection Method

Events are tracked, classified into an analytical framework, and coded for actors and targets, likely from news and reports.

Time Range

2000 to 2023

Freshness

Last updated metadata indicates 2026-01-22, but event coverage ends in 2023.

Geography

Over 135 countries worldwide