* @silindberg.bsky.social
Prof. Political Scientist

Director of the The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute
of the University of Gothenburg

For the first time in 50 years, #US is not on the list of liberal democracies, in V-dem's annual repport👇

In one year, the US has fallen from 20th to 51st place on the institute's index.

@silindberg.bsky.social @fabioangiolillo.bsky.social @marinanord.bsky.social #Democracy

"ZIB 2"-Langfassung: Interview mit Staffan Lindberg Demokratieforscher Staffan Lindberg von der Universität Göteborg berichtet über die Ergebnisse einer aktuellen Studie zum weltweiten Zustand der Demokratie. Dabei zeigt sich, dass autoritäre Systeme a...

Kontext dazu bietet der neue V-Dem Report: Menschen in Ö gehören zu den 7% der Weltbevölkerung, die in einer liberalen Demokratie leben dürfen. Rundherum geht's im Rekordtempo in die falsche Richtung. Spannendes Interview dazu von @arminwolf.at mit @silindberg.bsky.social:
on.orf.at/video/143158...

‘Trump is aiming for dictatorship’. That’s the verdict of the world’s most credible democracy watchdog | Martin Gelin Sweden’s V-Dem Institute warns that the US is no longer a liberal democracy. And autocracy is creeping across Europe too, says writer Martin Gelin

@silindberg.bsky.social: “For Orbán in Hungary, it took about 4 years, for Vučić in Serbia, it took 8 years, and for Erdoğan/Turkey & Modi/India, it took ~10 years to accomplish the suppression of democratic institutions that Trump has achieved in only one year." www.theguardian.com/world/commen...

@silindberg.bsky.social @velshi.com

Thank you sir, for taking the time to inform Ali and his viewers. Viewers like me.

www.v-dem.net/news/press-r...

Yep, I told him about it. :)

Fifty years of the third wave(s): from democratization to autocratization This piece reflects on 50 years since Portugal’s 1974 Carnation Revolution, seen as a trigger for the “third wave of democratization,” a global trend that transformed many dictatorships into democr...

Now out in print - open access for download!
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Fifty years of the third wave(s): from democratization to autocratization This piece reflects on 50 years since Portugal’s 1974 Carnation Revolution, seen as a trigger for the “third wave of democratization,” a global trend that transformed many dictatorships into democr...

Open Access:
-110 initially nondemocratic countries of the third wave from 1970 to 2024 - 105 episodes of autocratization followed in 75=60 (55 %) of these 110 countries are democracies by 2024, but 50 never became democracies or have reverted back to autocracy.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Opinion | ICE’s New Surveillance State Isn’t Tracking Only Immigrants

Autocracy in the USA: “Webloc, reportedly allows law enforcement officers to identify phones and track (...) without a warrant; Tangles (..) make dossiers on people of interest, including location information scraped from their public social media posts”
Gift article. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/o...

Report by @marinanord.bsky.social
@silindberg.bsky.social prepared for the 2024 Summit for Democracy

@vdeminstitute.bsky.social

USA har allvarliga problem.

V-Dem Institute director Lindberg (4.9.2025):

"It seems blatantly obvious that the US is now an electoral autocracy."

The US, until recently the oldest constitutional democracy, is no longer a democracy at all.

May this be a temporary development, soon to be reversed.

Två cirkeldiagram som visar att 49% av världspopulationen levde i autokratier 2004 men att denna siffra 2024 är 72%.

För övrigt var jag på seminarium igår där @silindberg.bsky.social vid V-dem menade att all tillgänglig data indikerar att USA inte längre kan räknas som en demokrati, men att detta med säkerhet först kan fastslås i början av nästa år då alla siffror är på plats.

Point (2) 👇

📢Can free academia withstand democratic backsliding? Why some universities wither while others survive. Read the recently published article in #ISPR. Together with Katrin Kinzelbach and @silindberg.bsky.social (Open Access): doi.org/10.1177/0192...

Understand the emphasis on the menace of the Trump admin. But also, would prefer they also run op-eds on how they’re all losers whose wives are fucking their friends. Stephen Miller was cucked by Musk.

Yep!

Happy to contribute

🗺️ We carried on with Staffan I. Lindberg @silindberg.bsky.social (University of Gothenburg) discussing the the severity of democratic backsliding we see today in the world and what supports U-turns in autocratization.

4️⃣ “A Framework for Understanding Regime Transformation: Introducing the ERT Dataset”.
Working Paper 113 from 2021 was the fourth most viewed (3,780 times). v-dem.net/media/public...
‪
@acrowinghen.bsky.social‬‬‬‬‬
‪@boesevanessa.bsky.social‬‬‬‬‬
@silindberg.bsky.social
3(6)

10 ways Trump attacked his enemies in the last two weeks YouTube video by Professor Christina Pagel

10 ways Trump attacked his enemies over last few weeks

youtube.com/shorts/GeRne...

How Do You Know You're Living in an Autocracy? Just Look Around You. The Steady State | Charles A. Ray

Yes
open.substack.com/pub/steadyst...

Opinion | How Tyranny Begins

Yes.
How Tyranny Begins www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/o...

January 6: A Date Which Will Live in Infamy Discover the real January 6 story: peaceful protest turned tragedy, Deep State entrapment, media deception, and President Trump's triumphant pardons restoring justice to patriotic Americans.

Declaration of intent to go further and demolish all institutional trappings of democracy. Insurgents are defendants.

www.whitehouse.gov/j6/

Information underpins Democracy – why the BBC must be defended Recent events at the BBC have wide-reaching implications for our democracy - and the sooner we realise it, the better

Yes.
Information underpins Democracy – why the BBC must be defended open.substack.com/pub/christin...

9th November: quick rundown of some classic autocratic behaviours over the past few days in America YouTube video by Professor Christina Pagel

quick rundown of some classic autocratic behaviours over the past few days in America Covering attacking enemies, helping allies, cowing institutions and purging the military

All actions and more on www.trumpactiontracker.info?

youtu.be/Mx4c4JfgLeU

Bulgarian MPs To Form Commission To Investigate George Soros’s Influence The parliamentary probe based on conspiracy theories about the philanthropist’s alleged meddling is backed by Bulgaria's main pro-Russian and nationalist parties as well as by tycoon Delyan Peevski’s ...

#Trump ’ism spreapding to Europe. #Democracy under attack.

www.eurasiareview.com/06112025-bul...

2 November: 'being Anti-Trump is probably illegal' YouTube video by Professor Christina Pagel

"Being Anti-Trump is probably illegal"

3 minutes on things that have happened in America over the weekend, concentrating on violating Democratic norms.

youtu.be/40OBi4acYYI

The Global Expression Report 2025 | Professor Staffan I. Lindberg Happy to contribute with facts from our #DemocracyReport2025. https://lnkd.in/eshEMcpd

www.linkedin.com/posts/profes...

Waiting for someone to explain why the announcement of a trade relationship that is worse than the one we had a year ago is received as a big success