Anna Lührmann

• PhD
• Senior Researcher at University of Gothenburg

Party organization is a central concept in comparative politics. Yet, data on party organizational features is sparse, scattered and available for a limited set of countries and parties. To advance global research on party organizations, we present the Varieties of Party Identity and Organization Dataset (V-Party) – the most comprehensive dataset t...

The widespread adoption of emergency powers during Covid-19 raises important questions about what constitutes a (un)democratic response to crises. While the institutions and practices of democracy during normal times are well established, democratic standards during emergencies have yet to be conceptualized in the literature. This makes it difficul...

This article analyses the state of democracy in 2020. The world is still more democratic than it was in the 1970s and 1980s, but a trend of autocratization is ongoing and affecting 25 countries in 2020, home to 34% of the world’s population. At the same time, the number of democratizing countries has dwindled by nearly half, reducing to 16 countrie...

This is a response to Luca Tomini's “Don't think of a wave!” and Svend-Erik Skaaning's “Waves of autocratization and democratization”. With this rejoinder we make three arguments: First, the question how global waves shape autocratization processes and regime transformations is now more urgent than ever. Since 1994, civil liberties and political ri...

Governments routinely justify why the regime over which they preside is entitled to rule. These claims to legitimacy are both an expression of and shape of how a rule is being exercised. In this paper, we introduce new expert-coded measures of regime legitimation strategies (RLS) for 183 countries in the world from 1900 to 2019. Country experts rat...

Accountability—constraints on a government’s use of political power—is one of the cornerstones of good governance. However, conceptual stretching and a lack of reliable measures have limited cross-national research on this concept. To address this research gap, we use V-Dem data and innovative Bayesian methods to develop new indices of accountabili...

This article analyses the state of democracy in the world in 2019. We demonstrate that the “third wave of autocratization” is accelerating and deepening. The dramatic loss of eight democracies in the last year sets a new record in the rate of breakdowns. Exemplifying this crisis is Hungary, now the EU’s first ever authoritarian member state. Govern...

States of emergency grant chief executives the power to bypass democratic constraints in order to combat existential threats. As such, they are ideal tools to erode democratic institutions while maintaining the illusion of constitutional legitimacy. Therefore, states of emergency should be associated with a heightened risk of autocratization––a dec...

Global threats to democracy – one of the world’s most important forms of inclusive governance – have been rising recently. This paper assesses the effects of social and economic inequalities on autocratisation, meaning a decline in the democratic qualities of a political regime. The key question we study is whether different types, levels and chang...

This article analyses the state of democracy in the world in 2018, and recent developments building on the 2019 release of the V-Dem dataset. First, the trend of autocratization continues and 24 countries are now affected by what is established as a “third wave of autocratization”. Second, despite the global challenge of gradual autocratization, de...

In this paper we introduce new expert-coded measures of regime legitimation strategies for 179 countries inthe world from 1900 up until 2018 that are comparable across time and space. Country experts have ratedthe extent to which the government promotes or referencesits performance, the person of the leader, rational-legality, and ideologyin order...

Accountability is one of the cornerstones of good governance. Establishing accountable governments is a top priority on the international development agenda. Yet, scholars and democracy practitioners know little about how accountability mechanisms develop and thus can be supported by international and national actors. The present study tackles the...

Less than 30 years after Fukuyama and others declared liberal democracy’s eternal dominance, a third wave of autocratization is manifest. Gradual declines of democratic regime attributes characterize contemporary autocratization. Yet, we lack the appropriate conceptual and empirical tools to diagnose and compare such elusive processes. Addressing t...

In this paper we introduce new expert-coded measures of regime legitimation strategies for 179 countries in the world from 1900 up until 2018 that are comparable across time and space. Country experts have rated the extent to which the government promotes or references its performance, the person of the leader, rational-legality, and ideology in or...

This article presents evidence of a global trend of autocratization. The most visible feature of democracy – elections – remains strong and is even improving in some places. Autocratization mainly affects non-electoral aspects of democracy such as media freedom, freedom of expression, and the rule of law, yet these in turn threaten to undermine the...

Classifying political regimes has never been more difficult. Most contemporary regimes hold de-jure multiparty elections with universal suffrage. In some countries, elections ensure that political rulers are—at least somewhat—accountable to the electorate whereas in others they are a mere window dressing exercise for authoritarian politics. Hence,...

Between 2007 and 2014 the United Nations (UN) assisted more than one-third of all national elections worldwide. Its experts routinely provide substantial technical advice on election management, logistical support such as the procurement of ballot papers and financial assistance. However, it remains doubtful if, and under which conditions, such ass...

Democracy is facing challenges across the world, yet suggestions of a global crisis are not warranted. Based on data from the largest democracy database ever compiled, the Varieties of Democracy Project (V-Dem), we find that the number of democracies worldwide declined slightly from 100 in 2011 to 97 today, and 16 countries transitioned to democrac...

As multiparty elections have become a global norm, scholars and policy experts regard public trust in elections as vital for regime legitimacy. However, very few cross-national studies have examined the consequences of electoral manipulation, including the manipulation of election administration and the media, on citizens' trust in elections. This...

In Berlin, 100 Representatives of the Bundestag have introduced a bill to add the principle of intergenerational justice to the Constitution (http://dip.bundestag. de/btd/16/033/1603399.pdf). Since autumn 2003, the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations (FRFG) has fought both inside and outside of Parliament for this bill. In more than a d...