A global, historical rule of law index

Abstract This article introduces the V-Dem Rule of Law Index, capturing formal-procedural aspects of de facto adherence to rule of law principles. It relies on information from fifteen V-Dem indicators based on systematic expert assessments. The measure covers almost all sovereign and semi-sovereign polities from 1789 until today, which means that its scope by far surpasses that of extant alternatives. All country-year point estimates are supplemented by confidence intervals. The conceptual framework underlying the index builds on a survey of established, thin understandings of the rule of law. Empirical dimensionality tests reveal that the indicators tap into a common trait, which supports the use of Bayesian factor analysis to construct the index values. Comparisons with established rule of law measures demonstrate a very high co-variation. In addition, descriptive overviews and correlations with measures of neighboring concepts indicate that the new measure is able to discriminate between the rule of law performance over time and between countries on the one hand and between adherence to the rule of law and neighboring features of good governance on the other hand. The article closes with an empirical examination of the association between de jure constitutional provisions and de facto observance of the rule of law. The findings, based on a conventional country and year fixed effects regression analysis covering most independent countries from 1850 to 2010, identify a negative, substantively weak association. Hence, the results indicate that constitutional provisions, by themselves, do not promote the rule of law in all contexts, such as under autocratic rule.