Varieties of Political Regimes
Your unique and comprehensive resource for understanding the diverse landscape of global political regimes
The Varieties of Political Regimes (Va-PoReg) project, hosted at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies at TU Dresden and funded by the Free State of Saxony (2022–2025), provides a global dataset classifying political regimes from 1900 to the present. Unlike approaches that focus on democratic quality, Va-PoReg categorizes regimes by their patterns of legitimation — how governments justify and organize political authority. This framework offers unique insights into autocratic diversity, regime stability, and legitimation crises, complementing projects like V-Dem while covering around 90 additional political entities often missing from other datasets.
Our dataset offers unparalleled features:
Historical and Current
Spanning 1900 to the present, with annual July updates, Va-PoReg covers the entire world, including microstates and semi-sovereign countries.
Beyond Democracies
Va-PoReg precisely categorizes political regimes into a wide range of types, from various autocracies and monarchies to transitional forms and different kinds of democracies.
First-of-its-Kind Colonial Focus
Va-PoReg systematically includes colonial and occupation regimes, a unique aspect among political regime datasets.
