Democracy Index 2024
Economist Intelligence Unit · Published February 2025
Latest edition: February 2025 · Next expected: February 2027
This ranking is misleading. The experts who assign the category scores are unnamed and their indicator judgements are undisclosed, so the rank cannot be audited.
What the report claims
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index rates 167 countries on 60 indicators across five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. India ranks 41st with a score of 7.29, in the flawed democracy band, the same band that holds the United States at 7.9.
The Credibility Score, dimension by dimension
- Methodology transparency / replicability
- 5 / 20
- Source verifiability + measurement integrity
- 5 / 25
- Internal consistency of India’s place
- 8 / 20
- Construct validity / India coverage
- 6 / 10
- Independence and funding
- 5 / 20
- Accountability (corrections, versioning)
- 1 / 5
Funding and independence: The index is funded and produced internally by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the for-profit business intelligence arm of The Economist Group, a private company whose largest shareholder is Exor, the Agnelli family holding company. The 2024 edition names no funders and no amounts, and income comes from subscriptions and advisory work for unnamed corporate and government clients. There is no independent academic governing board, external peer review, or published corrections ledger for the scores.
Sources: Economist Intelligence Unit, Democracy Index 2024
Updated 9 November 2026