Michael Ohler Consulting
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Analytical tools to study the evolution of democracy: the "flower chart"

April 22nd 2022, by Michael Ohler


What this study is about

For the previous two studies, I have explored data that are made avaiable by the State of Democracy website. With 5 attributes, 3+4+4+3+2 sub-attributes, 8 sub-sub-attributes and 116 indices the dataset is both impressively rich and confusing to a novice.

In this study, I experiment with a graphical interface to explore all these data at once, either for a given country or a group of countries. For that purpose, I arrange attributes and indices in a “flower-chart”, inspired by the artwork used by the State of Democracy team.

What still needs to be fixed is to display the labels of all these attributes and indices.



1 All indices and attributes, averaged for the world


The following chart averages all indices over the world population. For that purpose, a given index is weighted by the population of the countries. We see that some indices (outer ring) are more developed than others (yellow). We also notice that “direct democracy” is least developed:

The 5 attributes, 16 sub-attributes, 8 sub-sub-attributes and 116 indices tracked by State of Democracy. The values for all countries displayed here as global average, weighted by the size of the population.

Figure 1.1: The 5 attributes, 16 sub-attributes, 8 sub-sub-attributes and 116 indices tracked by State of Democracy. The values for all countries displayed here as global average, weighted by the size of the population.



2 Indices for one country


In the following we study a few countries:

Flower-plot for one country.

Figure 2.1: Flower-plot for one country.


Flower-plot for one country.

Figure 2.2: Flower-plot for one country.


Flower-plot for one country.

Figure 2.3: Flower-plot for one country.


Flower-plot for one country.

Figure 2.4: Flower-plot for one country.


Flower-plot for one country.

Figure 2.5: Flower-plot for one country.


Flower-plot for one country.

Figure 2.6: Flower-plot for one country.


Flower-plot for one country.

Figure 2.7: Flower-plot for one country.


Flower-plot for one country.

Figure 2.8: Flower-plot for one country.



3 Still do do


For a given year, the “flower-chart” functionality provides a good overview over all indices. What still needs to be implemented is: