The V-Dem Institute (Varieties of Democracy Institute) is an independent research institution, founded by Staffan I. Lindberg in 2014, and headquartered at the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The institute was established to solve a "data problem" by creating a comprehensive and disaggregated dataset to measure the complex components of democracy across countries and time, which existing measures lacked.
The core mechanism is the V-Dem Project, which conceptualizes democracy beyond simple elections by distinguishing between five high-level principles: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian. To measure these principles, V-Dem relies on a global network of over 4,000 Country Experts who provide expert judgments on difficult-to-observe concepts through online surveys. This expert-coded data is then aggregated using a sophisticated measurement model to produce indices, such as the Liberal Democracy Index and the Electoral Democracy Index.
The institute connects to the broader field of democracy measurement, offering a more granular alternative to indices like the Polity data series and Freedom House's Freedom in the World. It publishes its findings annually in the Democracy Report. The project continually reviews its methodology, and the most recent major update was the release of Version 16 of the V-Dem dataset in March 2026, which includes several hundred indicators and five indices. While the core principles and expert-coding mechanism remain constant, the methodology is adjusted to improve the quality and reliability of the indicators.