Has Montenegro Made Progress on Democracy?

2026-03-20 - 07:54

Good morning! In the V-Dem Institute’s 2026 report on the state of democracy in the world, Montenegro has made significant progress in terms of procedural democracy. Montenegro has been categorised as ED+ and, as such, ranked ahead of all Balkan countries, including EU members—Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and even Slovenia. But also, ahead of the United States and the United Kingdom. Incredible, right? Here’s what it’s about. Click here to join our Viber group, where we keep you updated live with the latest news and directly answer your questions. Has Montenegro made progress on democracy? V-Dem is not just anyone. Of all the institutes dealing with these issues, V-Dem is the most serious academic institution, and its project, which has existed since 2014, is based at the University of Gothenburg. It is the most detailed database assessing the state of democracy in a given country, based on principles theoretically shaped by Robert Dahl fifty years ago in his concept of polyarchy. The project brings together hundreds of researchers and experts from around the world and develops complex datasets covering nearly all countries from 1900 to the present. Theoretically, V-Dem starts from the idea that democracy is not a monolithic concept, but rather a set of different principles and dimensions. The key models it develops include electoral democracy (focused on free and fair elections), liberal democracy (rule of law, constraints on executive power), participatory democracy (citizen involvement), deliberative democracy (quality of public debate), and egalitarian democracy (equal access to political power). This approach enables more nuanced analysis—for example, a country may have elections but a weak rule of law, or high participation but low deliberative quality. Due to its granularity and historical depth, V-Dem has become one of the most important tools for studying democratisation, autocratisation, and political change in the contemporary world. ED+, the category assigned to Montenegro, means “electoral democracy” close to a higher level (liberal democracy)—that is, a country is clearly democratic in electoral terms (free and fair elections, pluralism, basic freedoms), but still does not fully meet liberal criteria such as strong institutions, checks on executive power, and rule of law. In other words, the electoral process is sufficiently sound, but there are structural problems (institutional weakness, political pressure, polarisation, judiciary issues, etc.) preventing it from entering the category of full liberal democracies. It may seem counterintuitive that Montenegro is ranked ahead of numerous EU member states such as Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Croatia, as well as the United States and the United Kingdom. This actually says more about V-Dem’s methodology than about the real hierarchy of democracies. First, V-Dem measures the quality of democratic institutions in a very narrow, procedural-institutional sense, not the overall democratic reputation of a country, its geopolitical importance, or historical standing. This means that if a country—like Montenegro—at a given moment has relatively clean elections, pluralism, and formally functioning institutions, it can receive a higher score than countries experiencing serious declines in specific dimensions. For instance, the U.S. and the U.K. have in recent years recorded declines in indicators such as polarisation, trust in elections, executive dominance, and constraints on power. V-Dem penalises this because it measures de facto functioning, not formal status or historical capital. Second, small states like Montenegro often have a simpler institutional landscape to measure. A less complex system can appear “cleaner” in certain indicators than large and conflict-prone systems. On the other hand, countries like Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria have chronic issues with corruption, captured institutions, or the judiciary, which directly lowers their liberal-democratic components. Third, the “snapshot effect” also plays a role—V-Dem captures a moment in time. Montenegro may currently be in a phase of relative institutional opening (after the 2020 change of government, increased pluralism, and the weakening of a single centre of power), while other countries are going through crises. This does not mean Montenegro is a more deeply consolidated democracy than those states, but rather that at that moment it deviated less from the ideal model in the indicators V-Dem measures. Montenegro has indeed made certain progress in the procedural and institutional dimensions of democracy, and V-Dem accurately records this. However, this progress does not mean system consolidation. On the contrary, the country is in a phase of increased vulnerability, where the strengthening of certain political actors in power carries the potential for a new phase of autocratisation. Unlike the previous period, in which an authoritarian government maintained a declaratively pro-Western orientation, any future concentration of power could have a much more pronounced anti-Western character. In other words, the next authoritarian shift—if it occurs—will likely not be geopolitically ambivalent, but clearly directed against Western norms and alliances. That’s all for today and for this week. Shabbat Shalom. See you again on Monday. Kind regards, Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst (Columnists’ opinions and views do not necessarily reflect those of the CdM editorial board)