• Fixed broken WGI URL, now data available to 2022
  • Removed dependence on plyr

  • Updated Freedom House download functions to use the latest data (2023 Freedom in the World Report)

  • Updated EIU to 2023 release (2023 EIU report).

  • Updated simplified Vdem (vdem_simple) data to latest version (13.0).

  • Deprecated redownload_pipe() (data no longer available for download)

  • Deprecated redownload_blm() (data no longer available for download)

  • Deprecated redownload_bnr() (data no longer available for download)

  • Added licensing info where available

  • Updated documentation for consistency and fixed various problems with citations.

  • Updated anckar data to V2 (with values to 2019).

  • Fixed Türkiye bug in country_year_coder()

  • Moved to a new build system using targets to ensure consistency

  • Updated BMR to version 4.0.

  • Updated BTI to 2022 release.

  • Updated EIU to 2022 release (2022 EIU report).

  • Updated LIED dataset to version 6.4.

  • Updated Freedom House download functions to use the latest data (2022 Freedom in the World Report).

  • Updated Vanhanen dataset to version 8.0

  • Added simplified basic version of V-Dem dataset (with just the 7 main democracy indexes) to the package.

  • Archived REIGN dataset (since it is no longer being maintained)

  • Re-wrote README for clarity

  • Minor big fixes and documentation updates

  • Added two new datasets, Bjørnskov and Rode (2021), which updates PACL/DD to 2020, and ANRR (Acemoglu, Naidu, Restrepo, and Robinson 2019), used in their article “Democracy does Cause Growth”.

  • Migrated some of the functions from QuickUDS to this package to facilitate the construction of latent variable indexes of democracy

  • Created three new articles: one on understanding the temporal and spatial coverage of the datasets included in the passage; one on understanding the correlations between different democracy measures; and one on creating latent variable indexes of democracy from the data in this package (including extending the Unified Democracy Scores)

  • Lots of minor improvements to the documentation and the website, including a better organized index of functions and articles.

  • Updated the Freedom House data (2021 with data up to 2020), updating download_fh and download_fh_full, and updated the documentation of these functions and the citation info for the FH data. (The List of Electoral Democracies downloaded via download_fh_electoral does not appear to have been updated by Freedom House yet).

  • Updated download_wgi_voice_and_accountability to download data up to the latest year (2019), and fixed the documentation of the function.

  • Updated the REIGN dataset documentation.

  • Updated eiu, the EIU democracy index (2021 edition, data up to 2020), and updated its citation info.

  • Minor code improvements.

  • Fixed README references.

  • Added tests of redownload_* family of functions.

  • Added Github Actions badge.

  • Minor changes to generate_democracy_scores_dataset to avoid deprecated dplyr::rename_at.

  • Added the Bertelsmann transformation Index of democracy (bti) and made improvements to generate_democracy_scores_dataset.

  • Minor fixes to documentation.

  • Fixed diagnostic printing issue when moving to dplyr 1.0.0.

  • Updated download_fh and download_fh_electoral to download the latest version (2020, with data up to 2019) of Freedom House.

  • Added a new function, download_fh_full to download the full Freedom House data (2012-2019) with all subcategory scores.

  • Archived the PolityIV dataset (annual version), since Polity is now moving to version 5 and revising all its scores.

  • Changed download_polity_annual to download version 5 of Polity (Polity5).

  • Fixed download_wgi_voice_and_accountability - now downloads correctly update to 2018.

  • eiu now updated to the latest release (2020, with data to 2019).

  • LIED now updated to the latest release (2020, version 5.2, with data to 2019).

  • Fixed redownload_magaloni download link, which had changed.

  • pitf now has two versions: pitf_p4 based on Polity IV data, and pitf, calculated from Polity5. Both now include data to 2018.

  • Eliminated redownload_uds function since the UDS website is no longer online.

  • Updated bibliography and documentation for many datasets.

  • Fixed download link for the SVMDI dataset, minor typo fixes.
  • Updated download_fh and download_fh_electoral to download the latest version (2019, with data up to 2018) of Freedom House.

  • Updated download_polity_annual to download the 2018 update of Polity IV.

  • Updated download_reign to download the latest data from REIGN.

  • eiu now updated to the latest release (2019, with data to 2018).

  • Updated download_wgi_voice_and_accountability to use the latest version of the data.

  • Now includes Anckar and Fredriksson’s (2018) dataset of authoritarian regimes (anckar) and the Support Vector Machine index of democracy (two versions, Grundler and Krieger 2018 and 2016)

  • Fixed bugs in the download_reign function due to a change of schema in their google sheet.

  • Now includes the Economist Intelligence Index’s democracy index (eiu).

  • Updated the bmr dataset to the latest version (3.0), which includes a new variable, democracy_femalesuffrage.

  • Fixed bugs with the download_reign function not picking up the right google spreadsheet.

  • Fixed bugs in country_year_coder not picking up on “Sudan, South” as a country.

  • Added a NEWS.md file to track changes to the package.

  • donwload_fh now downloads the latest versions of the Freedom House “Freedom in the World” dataset (updated to 2017, report date January 2018)

  • download_wgi_voice_and_accountability now downloads the latest version of the World Bank’s voice and accountability index (updated to 2016)