Countries With the Highest Regime Type

Every country with a figure for regime type, ranked from highest to lowest. The top three are Australia (3), Austria (3) and Belgium (3). The middle country of the 175 has 1.

What this measures

Regime type, Regimes of the World classification, in regime category (0-3). Source: V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg. For this measure, higher is better.

Four ranked categories, not a scale. It is the only such measure on this site. A closed autocracy holds no multiparty elections for its leader. An electoral autocracy holds them, but they are neither free nor fair. An electoral democracy clears that bar. A liberal democracy also has independent courts and protected personal freedoms. The four steps are not equal distances apart. So read the rank-based link, which uses only the order, rather than the ordinary one. Both are shown. The categories are set by cut-off points on the V-Dem indices already on this site. That is why its pairs with them are flagged as built from the same numbers. It is also why it is kept out of the governance score: a grouping of those indices averaged back in beside them would count each twice. Our World in Data extends the categories back to territories before independence. This site starts at 1960, and its single-year snapshot at 2010, so that extension reaches nothing shown here.

The full ranking

Each country’s latest figure, from 2025–2025. The year beside each value says when it was measured.

More on regime type

• Countries With the Lowest Regime Type
• Regime type by country: trend over time and what it goes with

Related rankings

• Countries With the Highest Corruption Perceptions Index
• Countries With the Highest Political Rights (FH)
• Countries With the Highest Civil Liberties (FH)
• Countries With the Highest Trust in Government
• Countries With the Highest Pre-trial Detainee Shares
• Countries With the Highest Refugees Originating
• Countries With the Highest Electoral Democracy
• Countries With the Highest Liberal Democracy

A ranking describes countries, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All country rankings.