“Little and Meng (2024) found little evidence of global democratic decline in objective indicators over the past decade and considered coder bias as an explanation for the gap with expert-coded indicators; Knutsen, Marquardt, Seim and Coppedge (2024) disputed their data and conclusions.”

Context. Little and Meng note that they cannot rule out decline that only subjective judgement can detect; Knutsen et al. argue that most democracy measures must balance conceptual coverage against potential bias.