Glossary of Key Terms

A political condition that is almost impossible to leave once entered. Think of it like quicksand: the deeper you sink, the harder it is to get out. In this framework, the Tyranny Well functions as a near-absorbing state because entrenched dictatorships systematically destroy the institutions (free press, independent courts, opposition parties) that would be needed to escape. Historically, fewer than 3% of countries that fall into deep autocracy recover within a generation.

Example: North Korea (L = 2) has been an absorbing state since the 1950s.

A simple statistical model that predicts where something is headed based on where it is right now. Imagine predicting tomorrow's temperature: the best single guess is usually “close to today's temperature, plus or minus some randomness.” AR(1) works the same way for liberty scores. In the independent audit of this framework, this simple model actually outperformed more complex stage-based models for predicting a country's future trajectory — a humbling finding that the framework openly acknowledges.

Think of a valley that countries naturally roll into and get stuck in. An attractor basin is a stable political condition that tends to hold countries in place once they arrive, like a marble settling into a bowl. This framework identifies three such valleys: the Democratic Plateau (stable freedom), the Hybrid Trap (partial freedom, unstable), and the Tyranny Well (dictatorship). The deeper the valley, the harder it is for a country to climb out.

A system of government where power is concentrated in one person or a small group, with few or no checks on that power. Unlike a democracy, where leaders can be voted out and courts can overrule the government, autocracies suppress these constraints. Autocracy comes in many forms: military dictatorships, one-party states, or elected leaders who gradually dismantle democratic institutions from within (sometimes called competitive authoritarianism).

The economic penalty that markets impose on countries with authoritarian governments. Investors demand higher interest rates to lend to autocracies because these governments are less predictable, less transparent, and more likely to default or seize assets. The framework estimates this penalty at roughly 100–300 basis points (1–3 percentage points) of additional borrowing cost, meaning autocracies pay billions more each year in interest on their national debt compared to democracies of similar size.

The gradual erosion of democratic institutions and norms in a country that was previously democratic. Unlike a sudden coup, backsliding happens slowly — a weakened court here, a muzzled newspaper there — so that no single event seems alarming enough to trigger mass resistance. It is the political equivalent of boiling a frog: each step is small, but the cumulative effect is the death of democracy. The Eight-Step Progression maps this process in detail.

Example: Hungary's slide from L = 89 (2005) to L = 63 (2025) under Viktor Orbán.

How “sticky” a political condition is — how hard it is for a country to escape. A deep basin means the political system is very stable (for better or worse). The Tyranny Well is the deepest basin, meaning dictatorships are extremely hard to leave. The Democratic Plateau is moderately deep, meaning established democracies are fairly durable. The Hybrid Trap is the shallowest, meaning countries there are unstable and could go either way. Technically, depth is calibrated from historical transition probabilities measured over decades.

Bond market investors who “punish” governments for risky policies by selling their bonds, which drives up interest rates and makes borrowing more expensive. They are called vigilantes because they act as an unofficial check on government behavior. The framework argues that bond vigilantes have historically punished democratic erosion with higher borrowing costs — but the US has been partially shielded from this discipline because of its reserve currency status, which means there may be a delayed reckoning.

When money leaves a country rapidly because investors and citizens fear political instability, expropriation, or economic collapse. Capital flight is both a symptom and an accelerant of democratic erosion: it weakens the economy, which gives autocrats a pretext for emergency powers, which causes more money to flee. It is one of the economic consequences the framework tracks as a leading indicator of institutional decline.

One of the three forces in the framework's model of political power. Chaos measures how fragmented and disordered a country is — whether the state can actually govern its territory and population. A country with high Chaos is one where no one is in charge: think of a failed state torn apart by civil war, rival militias, or collapsed institutions. The score is derived from the Fragile States Index and runs from 0 (perfect order) to 100 (complete state failure). Chaos is different from tyranny: a dictatorship has low chaos (one person controls everything), while a failed state has high chaos (no one controls anything).

Examples of high Chaos: Somalia, Yemen, South Sudan.

The network of organizations, groups, and institutions that exist between the government and the individual: charities, trade unions, religious groups, professional associations, community organizations, advocacy groups, and independent media. Civil society acts as a buffer against authoritarian power because it gives citizens ways to organize, share information, and resist government overreach without relying on the state itself. Its suppression is Step 6 in the Eight-Step Progression.

A system that looks like a democracy on the surface — it holds elections, has an opposition, and maintains some press freedom — but the playing field is tilted so heavily in the ruling party's favor that genuine competition is nearly impossible. The elections are real but unfair. The courts exist but are controlled. The press is free but harassed. This concept, developed by political scientists Levitsky and Way, describes many countries stuck in the Hybrid Trap.

Examples: Russia under early Putin, Hungary under Orbán, Turkey under Erdoğan.

The process by which a political system becomes firmly established and resistant to change. Democratic consolidation means democracy has become “the only game in town” — no significant political actors are trying to overthrow it. Autocratic consolidation is the mirror image: a dictatorship has eliminated all viable opposition and locked in its power. Step 8 in the Eight-Step Progression (Constitutional Consolidation) marks the point where autocratic power becomes nearly permanent.

See Event Horizon.

The stable “valley” where healthy democracies sit, defined by a Liberty score above 80. Countries here have strong, overlapping protections for freedom: independent courts, free press, competitive elections, and active civil society. These protections reinforce each other, so even if one institution comes under pressure, the others compensate. Think of it like a safety net with many layers — cutting one strand doesn't cause a fall. This is why stable democracies rarely collapse overnight: the redundancy provides resilience.

Examples: Norway (L = 94), Germany (L = 92), Canada (L = 92).

The worldwide trend since roughly 2006 in which more countries are losing democratic freedoms than gaining them. Political scientist Larry Diamond coined this term to describe a period when the “third wave” of democratization stalled and reversed. The framework quantifies this recession by tracking how many countries are crossing from the Democratic Plateau into the Hybrid Trap each year. The data shows this rate accelerated after 2006 and has not reversed.

When the success or failure of a political action in one country inspires (or discourages) similar action in others. Positive demonstration effects spread democracy: the fall of the Berlin Wall inspired revolutions across Eastern Europe. Negative demonstration effects spread autocracy: when one country's strongman successfully consolidates power, it emboldens would-be autocrats elsewhere and provides them a playbook to follow.

The framework's model of how democracies die — not in a sudden coup, but through a predictable sequence of institutional erosion. Each step weakens a different pillar of democracy, and each makes the next step easier. The eight steps are: (1) Norm Erosion — leaders break unwritten rules; (2) Information Capture — independent media is pressured or co-opted; (3) Judicial Capture — courts are packed or defanged; (4) Legislative Subordination — parliament becomes a rubber stamp; (5) Regulatory Capture — agencies serve the leader, not the public; (6) Civil Society Suppression — NGOs, unions, and protest are restricted; (7) Electoral Manipulation — elections are rigged or rendered meaningless; (8) Consolidation — constitutional changes lock in permanent rule.

When powerful insiders — business leaders, military generals, senior officials, oligarchs — withdraw their support from an autocratic leader. Elite defection is one of the few forces that can reverse democratic erosion because these are the people who actually operate the machinery of power. When they decide the leader is more of a liability than an asset, change becomes possible. The framework identifies elite defection as one of the key “reversal factors” that can push a country back from the brink.

The amount of political change needed for a country to break free from its current attractor basin and move to a different one. Borrowed from physics (where it means the speed needed to escape a planet's gravity), escape velocity in this context describes how much institutional reform, popular mobilization, or external pressure is needed to push a country from, say, the Hybrid Trap up to the Democratic Plateau. The deeper the basin, the higher the escape velocity required.

The point of no return for a declining democracy. Named after the boundary around a black hole beyond which nothing can escape, the event horizon in this framework is the Liberty score threshold of roughly 52–55. Below this line, democratic recovery becomes extremely rare — historically, only about 3% of countries that fall below it manage to climb back. This is the score at which institutional damage becomes self-reinforcing: weakened courts cannot check a leader who is weakening courts further. Also called the Critical Instability Zone.

The US is assessed at L ≈ 48 in this framework, placing it below the event horizon.

An annual ranking produced by the Fund for Peace that measures how close countries are to state failure. It scores countries on 12 indicators including security threats, economic decline, public services, and human rights. In this framework, the FSI (inverted and rescaled) provides the data for the Chaos (C) component of the ternary constraint. A country with a high FSI score is one where the government struggles to maintain basic order.

A US-based organization that has published annual “Freedom in the World” reports since 1972, scoring 195 countries on political rights and civil liberties on a 0–100 scale. Think of it as a report card for democracy. Freedom House scores are the primary data source for the Liberty (L) component in this framework. While no single measure is perfect, Freedom House is widely used because of its long track record, consistent methodology, and global coverage.

The breakdown of the old assumption that economic development leads to democracy. For decades, scholars believed that as countries got richer and more educated, they would inevitably become freer. The Great Decoupling shows this is no longer true: countries like China and Singapore have achieved high levels of economic development, health care, and education while remaining authoritarian. Technically, the correlation between HCI (state capability) and Liberty dropped from r = 0.79 to r = 0.57 — meaning capable, wealthy autocracies are increasingly common.

A measure of how well a country delivers the basics of a good life: health, education, and economic opportunity. A high HCI score means the government is competent at running hospitals, schools, and infrastructure. Crucially, a high HCI does not mean a country is free — a dictatorship can build excellent hospitals while jailing journalists. The Great Decoupling shows that capable autocracies are increasingly common: they deliver prosperity without liberty.

Example: China has a high HCI (capable state) but very low Liberty (L = 5).

The political gray zone between democracy and dictatorship, where countries hold elections but those elections don't truly matter, where courts exist but can't check the leader, and where the press is technically free but effectively controlled. Countries in the Hybrid Trap (Liberty scores roughly 20–70) are like a ball balanced on a hilltop: they can roll toward democracy or toward dictatorship, but they can also stay stuck in this uncomfortable middle ground for years or decades. About 67% of countries in this zone are still there ten years later.

Examples: Hungary (L = 63), India (L = 66), Turkey (L = 32).

When a government institution that is supposed to serve the public is instead taken over to serve the interests of those in power. A captured court rules in the leader's favor. A captured election commission certifies fraudulent results. A captured tax agency targets political opponents. Institutional capture is the mechanism through which the Eight-Step Progression operates — each step captures a different institution until there are no independent checks left.

The principle that healthy democracies survive because they have multiple overlapping checks on power, not just one. If the courts are weakened, the press can still expose abuse. If the press is pressured, civil society can still organize opposition. If civil society is suppressed, elections can still replace leaders. It takes capturing all of these institutions to consolidate autocratic power, which is why the Eight-Step Progression has eight steps, not one. Institutional redundancy is what makes the Democratic Plateau stable.

Literally “rule by thieves.” A government whose primary purpose is enriching its leaders rather than serving its citizens. Kleptocracies channel public resources into private accounts through corruption, rigged contracts, and state-controlled industries. This matters for the framework because kleptocracy creates powerful incentives to maintain autocratic control: losing power means losing wealth (and potentially facing prosecution), so leaders will do almost anything to stay in power.

Examples: Russia under Putin, Equatorial Guinea under Obiang, Angola under dos Santos.

The framework's core measure of political freedom, scored from 0 (no freedom) to 100 (full freedom). Liberty captures both political rights (can you vote? run for office? form a party?) and civil liberties (can you speak freely? worship freely? assemble? receive a fair trial?). The score is derived from Freedom House data. Together with Tyranny (T) and Chaos (C), Liberty forms the ternary constraint that maps every country's political position.

Scale: Norway L = 94 (very free) → Hungary L = 63 → Russia L = 10 → North Korea L = 2 (no freedom).

When a country's parliament or congress stops acting as an independent check on the executive and instead becomes a rubber stamp for the leader's decisions. This is Step 4 in the Eight-Step Progression. It can happen through intimidation, bribery, gerrymandering, or simply through a political party that places loyalty to the leader above its constitutional role. Once the legislature is captured, the leader can pass laws to further consolidate power without meaningful opposition.

The idea that where you are now is all that matters for predicting where you'll go next — your history doesn't matter. Imagine a board game where your next move depends only on which square you're standing on, not how you got there. The independent audit of this framework tested whether this holds for political systems and found that it does not: a country's history matters. Countries that have passed through certain erosion steps (media capture, civil society suppression) behave differently from countries at the same liberty score that haven't. This is called path dependence.

The tendency for things to drift back toward an average over time. For political systems, mean reversion means that countries with very low or very high liberty scores tend to move toward a middle value over the long run. The global mean-reversion point for Liberty scores is estimated at L* = 81.6, which is good news: it suggests the long-term pull of the global political system is toward democracy. The bad news: “long-term” can mean decades or centuries, and individual countries can get trapped in the Tyranny Well for generations before this pull takes effect.

The breaking of unwritten rules that democracies depend on. Laws can only do so much; much of what makes democracy work is voluntary restraint — leaders choosing not to do things they technically could do. Norm erosion is Step 1 in the Eight-Step Progression because it is the first crack in the system: when leaders start breaking norms (attacking the press, refusing to concede defeat, firing independent officials, politicizing law enforcement), it signals that the unwritten social contract of democracy is fraying. Each broken norm makes the next violation more acceptable.

The idea that a country's history shapes its future — where you've been affects where you can go. Two countries with the same Liberty score today may have very different futures if one arrived there by declining from democracy and the other by improving from autocracy. The independent audit confirmed path dependence is real: countries that have already experienced media capture and civil society suppression are significantly less likely to recover than countries at the same liberty score that haven't. See also Markov Property.

A system of loyalty built on favors and rewards rather than merit. An autocrat distributes government jobs, contracts, and resources to supporters, who in turn help maintain the leader's power. Think of it as a pyramid scheme of political loyalty: everyone in the network depends on the system continuing, which makes them personally invested in keeping the autocrat in power. Patronage networks are one of the key mechanisms that make the Tyranny Well so hard to escape.

A map of all possible political positions a country can occupy. Just as a GPS plots your location using latitude and longitude, the framework plots each country's political position using three coordinates: Liberty, Tyranny, and Chaos. Because these three must add up to 100 (the ternary constraint), this creates a triangular map — a triangle where each corner represents the extreme of one dimension. Every country in the world can be placed somewhere on this triangle at any point in time.

The name of this research framework. Topology is a branch of mathematics that studies the shape of surfaces — their hills, valleys, and ridgelines. This framework applies that idea to politics: it maps the “landscape” of political systems, with valleys (attractor basins) where countries get stuck, ridgelines (ridgelines) where they are unstable, and slopes that pull them in one direction or another. The name captures the central insight: political change is shaped by the landscape itself, not just by the actions of individual leaders.

A visual tool that shows the range of possible futures for a country, fanning out from the present like a cone. The center of the cone is the most likely path; the edges represent less likely but possible outcomes. A wide cone means high uncertainty; a narrow cone means the future is more predictable. The framework uses probability cones to illustrate scenarios for the United States from 2026 to 2040, showing that the most likely path continues downward but that recovery remains possible (though increasingly improbable) under certain conditions.

The framework's own real-time assessment of a country's institutional health, updated more frequently than traditional annual measures like Freedom House or V-Dem. The PTI weighs institutional constraint erosion more heavily than traditional scores, which means it often shows decline earlier. Think of it as an early warning system: it is designed to detect trouble while established indices are still showing relative stability. The tradeoff is that it involves more subjective judgment than purely data-driven scores.

The set of rules, institutions, and practices that determine how a country is governed. A regime is not the same as a government — a government is the specific people in charge, while a regime is the system they operate within. A democratic regime means leaders are chosen by fair elections and constrained by law. An authoritarian regime means power is concentrated and unchecked. A regime transition is the often-turbulent process of changing from one type to another.

A currency that other countries' central banks hold in large quantities for international trade and as a store of value. The US dollar is the world's dominant reserve currency, which gives the United States an enormous economic advantage: it can borrow more cheaply, print money with less inflation risk, and run larger deficits than other countries. The Reserve Currency Premium estimates this advantage at 200–580 basis points (2–5.8 percentage points) of lower interest rates. The framework argues that democratic erosion could eventually threaten this status.

The discount on borrowing costs that the US enjoys because the dollar is the world's primary reserve currency. This means the US government pays lower interest rates on its debt than it otherwise would. The framework estimates this premium at 200–580 basis points over a 5–10 year horizon — worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually. If institutional erosion causes global investors to lose confidence in American governance, this premium could shrink, significantly increasing the cost of US government debt.

The unstable boundary between two attractor basins, where a country could tip in either direction. Imagine standing on a mountain ridge: a step to the left leads down one valley, a step to the right leads down another. In the framework, the ridgeline between the Hybrid Trap and the Tyranny Well coincides roughly with the Event Horizon (L ≈ 52–55). Countries at the ridgeline experience maximum political volatility because small events can determine which basin they fall into.

The group of people whose support a leader needs to stay in power. In a democracy, the selectorate is large (all voters), so leaders must provide broad public goods (healthcare, infrastructure, education) to keep their support. In an autocracy, the selectorate is small (military leaders, party elites, oligarchs), so leaders only need to reward a few key supporters with private benefits. This concept, developed by political scientists Bueno de Mesquita and Smith, explains why democracies tend to invest in public welfare while autocracies tend toward corruption: the size of the selectorate determines the incentive structure.

The difference in interest rates between one country's government bonds and a benchmark (usually US Treasury bonds). A higher spread means investors see more risk in lending to that country. The framework tracks sovereign spreads as a financial measure of governance quality: when a country's institutions erode, investors demand higher interest rates, widening the spread. This creates a measurable, real-time price signal for democratic decline — markets are effectively putting a dollar value on institutional health.

How long a country typically spends at each step of the Eight-Step Progression. An important finding of the framework is that stage durations are not equal: early stages (norm erosion, media pressure) can last years, giving democracies time to self-correct. But later stages accelerate dramatically — once judicial independence is lost, the remaining steps can unfold in months rather than years. This acceleration is why early intervention matters: the window for reversing democratic erosion narrows rapidly as the process advances.

An unpredictable event that pushes a country's political trajectory in an unexpected direction. “Stochastic” simply means random or unpredictable. Examples include economic crises, pandemics, wars, assassinations, mass protests, and natural disasters. In the framework's mathematical model, stochastic shocks are the random jolts that can push a country over a ridgeline from one attractor basin to another. They are why political change is inherently unpredictable: even the best models cannot forecast the specific events that alter a country's course.

A government that uses technology to monitor its citizens' activities, communications, and movements in order to maintain political control. Modern surveillance states use tools that earlier dictators could only dream of: facial recognition, internet monitoring, social media analysis, mobile phone tracking, and AI-powered predictive systems. Surveillance technology makes the Tyranny Well deeper than ever before because it allows autocrats to identify and neutralize opposition before it can organize, reducing the probability of escape velocity being achieved.

Example: China's social credit system and Xinjiang surveillance apparatus.

The framework's foundational rule: L + T + C = 100. All political power in a country is divided among three forces — Liberty (distributed freedom), Tyranny (concentrated authoritarian control), and Chaos (fragmentation and disorder) — and they must always add up to 100. Think of it like a pie that is always the same size: if tyranny gets a bigger slice, liberty and chaos must get smaller slices. This creates a triangular map (phase space) where every country can be plotted at any point in time.

The massive global expansion of democracy that began in 1974 with Portugal's Carnation Revolution and swept through Southern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and eventually Eastern Europe and Africa. Political scientist Samuel Huntington identified three historical “waves” of democratization (1828–1926, 1943–1962, 1974–present). The framework's data covers all three waves and argues that the third wave has now stalled and partially reversed in what is called the Democratic Recession.

The statistical likelihood that a country will move from one political condition to another within a given time period. For example: “A country at Stage 4 of the Eight-Step Progression has a 45% chance of advancing to Stage 5 within five years.” These probabilities are calculated from historical data across 91 countries and 225 years, and they are what give the framework its predictive power. They also reveal the asymmetry at the heart of democratic erosion: the probability of downward movement is generally higher than upward recovery.

Having three stable resting states. A classic example from physics is a ball that can settle into any of three valleys. This framework models political systems as tristable, meaning countries tend to settle into one of three conditions: the Democratic Plateau, the Hybrid Trap, or the Tyranny Well. This three-state model is more realistic than the simpler two-state (democracy vs. dictatorship) framework used in traditional political science, because it accounts for the large number of countries stuck in the gray zone between freedom and oppression.

The framework's measure of concentrated authoritarian power, scored from 0 (no tyranny) to 100 (absolute dictatorship). Tyranny represents the degree to which a single leader or ruling group controls the state without checks or accountability. It is calculated as a residual: T = 100 − L − C. Because it is derived from the other two measures rather than measured directly, the framework acknowledges this as a limitation and calls for future work to develop independent tyranny indicators.

The deepest and most inescapable of the three attractor basins, where countries with Liberty scores below 30 get trapped. Once a political system falls into the Tyranny Well, the autocrat systematically destroys every institution that could enable a return to democracy: courts are captured, media is silenced, opposition is imprisoned, civil society is crushed, and elections become theater. Each of these actions makes the well deeper, because it removes another potential escape route. Historical recovery rate: below 3% per generation. This is why the framework emphasizes prevention over cure.

Examples: Russia (L = 10), China (L = 5), North Korea (L = 2), Eritrea (L = 3).

A research institute at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, that produces the most comprehensive democracy dataset in the world. V-Dem covers 202 countries from 1789 to the present using over 600 indicators scored by thousands of country experts. While Freedom House provides the framework's primary liberty scores (from 1972 onward), V-Dem provides the deep historical data that enables the 225-year longitudinal analysis — allowing the framework to study transitions that happened long before modern democracy indices existed.

How fast a country's Liberty score is changing, measured in points per year. Think of it as the political equivalent of speed: a car's position tells you where it is, but its velocity tells you where it's going. Negative velocity means a country is losing freedom (backsliding); positive velocity means it is gaining freedom (consolidating or recovering). The framework calculates velocity over different time windows — 2-year, 10-year, and 15-year — to separate short-term noise from sustained trends. A country with a high negative velocity is one that should concern observers even if its current liberty score still looks acceptable.

Example: The US velocity is estimated at roughly −18 points/year in the framework's assessment.

The minimum group of supporters a leader needs to hold power. In a healthy democracy, the winning coalition is large (a majority of voters), which forces leaders to serve broad public interests. In an autocracy, the winning coalition is small (perhaps just a handful of generals, oligarchs, or party leaders), which means the leader only needs to keep a few people happy — usually through personal rewards rather than good governance. The size of the winning coalition explains many differences between democracies and autocracies: public spending patterns, corruption levels, and even how long leaders stay in power. Concept from political scientists Bueno de Mesquita and Smith. See also Selectorate.

A demographic situation where a large proportion of a country's population is young (typically under 30). Youth bulges can be a force for political change in either direction: they can fuel pro-democracy movements (young people have less to lose and more to gain from change) or destabilize fragile states (high youth unemployment creates frustration that can be exploited by extremists). The framework includes youth bulge analysis because demographic structure affects how susceptible a country is to stochastic shocks and how likely it is to experience regime-threatening mass mobilization.