This working paper has examined whether there is added value in developing a regionally grounded approach to democracy measurement. The answer is cautiously affirmative. The evidence reviewed in Part 1 presents a largely stable picture of Nordic democracy: across the core datasets, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden continue to rank among the world’s strongest democracies, with robust performance in electoral integrity, civil liberties, rule of law and institutional quality. There is little indication of systematic democratic backsliding across the region.
At the same time, Part 1 also shows that high aggregate scores do not capture the full picture. Several indices and country assessments point to modest declines, recurring lower-scoring areas and more uneven performance in specific dimensions, including political participation, minority inclusion, media freedom and pluralism, public-sector integrity, trust and accountability and aspects of equality. These patterns partly overlap with wider pressures discussed in the paper, such as the rise in political discontent, shifting party systems, migration and integration debates, digitalisation and disinformation, climate and energy transitions, geopolitical insecurity, and territorial inequalities. The main implication is that Nordic democracies are not experiencing a common pattern of democratic breakdown, but neither are they insulated from pressures that may already be affecting aspects of democratic quality.
Part 1 concludes by identifying five gaps in how Nordic democracy is currently measured: evidence is fragmented across sources; aggregate scores are often insufficiently sensitive to gradual or uneven change; distinctive Nordic institutional and societal features are only partly captured or conceptually unsettled; democracy below the national level is weakly measured; and Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Åland are inconsistently covered. Part 2 builds directly on these measurement gaps and maps a range of practical pathways towards a feasible, regionally grounded approach to democracy measurement in the Nordic countries. It considers how dispersed evidence could be synthesised, how a harmonised Nordic dataset could be structured, how sensitivity could be improved within an established conceptual framework, how Nordic-specific features and subnational democracy might be incorporated, and how the wider Nordic Region could be represented more fully.
The approaches outlined in Part 2 are not presented as a single sequential model. Some are alternatives that respond to the same gap, while others are complementary and could be combined in different ways. Further work would therefore need to determine which gaps should be prioritised, which approaches offer the greatest added value and methodological feasibility, and which combinations are realistic given available data, expertise and resources.