The Democracy Delivery Gap is the distance between a country’s democratic quality and its actual capacity to deliver public services. A country can hold free elections and still fail to provide clean water, reliable electricity, and quality schooling at scale. The gap between political openness and institutional performance is not inevitable. It is measurable. It is addressable. And it varies enormously across emerging markets.
Why it matters. Most governance indices measure one thing. The Freedom House index measures political rights. The World Bank’s Government Effectiveness index measures bureaucratic capacity. The V-Dem index measures democratic procedures. None of them measure the gap between the two. The conversion failure that leaves citizens in democracies with fewer services than citizens in authoritarian states that have invested in delivery machinery. The Democracy Delivery Gap Index (DDGI) fills this space.
How it is measured. DDGI = Democracy Quality Score (DQS) minus Delivery Capacity Score (DCS).
DQS draws on two V-Dem indicators: the liberal democracy index (v2x_libdem) and the electoral democracy index (v2x_polyarchy), equally weighted. Both are normalised to the 0-1 range over the sample.
DCS draws on five World Bank indicators: infant mortality (inverted), electricity access, basic water access, secondary school enrollment, and WGI government effectiveness, equally weighted and normalised to the 0-1 range.
A positive DDGI means democracy quality exceeds delivery capacity. A negative DDGI means delivery capacity exceeds democratic quality. Or more precisely, that the delivery system has outpaced the democratic institutions.
What the index shows. Across 30 emerging markets (2010-2023), 6 countries score positive: Nigeria (+0.083), Argentina (+0.046), Brazil (+0.029), Kenya (+0.010), South Africa (+0.009), and Senegal (+0.006). The remaining 24 score negative. Delivery is ahead of democracy. Or more accurately, neither is sufficient. Vietnam (-0.802), Kazakhstan (-0.721), and Uzbekistan (-0.732) show the largest delivery-over-democracy gaps. India’s DDGI fell from +0.065 in 2010 to -0.497 in 2023, the sharpest deterioration in the 30-country sample.
What it does not measure. DDGI is not a quality-of-democracy index. It is a conversion-gap index. A country with a negative DDGI may be democratic and poorly governed, or authoritarian and reasonably efficient, or neither. The sign alone does not tell you which. The component scores (DQS and DCS) are necessary to interpret the headline number. Always read DQS and DCS alongside DDGI.
Data and methodology. Full data, methodology, and country profiles are available at juncturepolicy.org/data-lab. The index uses V-Dem v16 (V-Dem Institute), WGI 2025 (World Bank), and WDI (World Bank). Data: 30 emerging markets, 2010-2023. Updated annually.