What difference does it make when people can choose their leaders? One area where the right to vote for political leaders may matter is corruption.

Democracy and corruption are hard to measure. One possible way to understand how countries perform on these fronts is to ask experts who study them closely. These expert judgments aren’t perfect, but we think they’re useful.

The V-Dem project surveys experts to assess how democratic each country is. Are elections free and fair? Do all citizens have equal voting rights? Are fundamental freedoms — like speech and assembly — respected? Experts also rate how frequent corruption is in public institutions, from bribery and embezzlement to whether laws are enforced fairly.

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...read more at ourworldindata.org