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Category: Project

Description: Autocratization affects democracies and autocracies with gradual setbacks in democratic qualities. In the current debate on autocratization, a comprehensive overview of different autocratization concepts and empirical measures is still lacking. Addressing the gap, this research note provides new insights on how to conceptualize and measure autocratization periods with Freedom House, Polity IV and V-Dem data, and how different measures produce different findings regarding the number of autocratization periods. We demonstrate that measuring autocratization periods with the Electoral Democracy Index, as well as with the Liberal Democracy Index from V-Dem and a 0.1 threshold, outplay other operationalization and balance conceptual stretching and empirical rigor to detect autocratization episodes.