Extremists are the tools of change for aspiring autocrats.


NOTICE


Current plans anticipate a five-year update (2019-2023) of the Polity5 data series in 2024. The CSP Director, Monty G. Marshall, has been focused on writing treatises discussing the many empirical findings of the research and analysis done during his long association with the US Government's Political Instability Task Force (1998-2020). NEW PUBLICATIONS: Two studies are slated for publication in 2023: "Hybrid Authority Systems and Political Instability" in the Handbook of Fragile States and "Societal-System Analytics and the Problem of Factionalism in Emerging (and Declining) Democracies" in the journal Social Evolution and History. He is currently working on a mixed text and video expansion of the theoretical framework for Societal-System Analytics originally outlined in the CSP Video Book series, titled Managing Complexity in Modern Societal-Systems (ready for publication in 2023).


NOTE: The USA dropped below the "democracy threshold" (+6) on the POLITY scale in 2020 and
was considered an anocracy (+5) at the end of the year 2020; the USA score for 2021 returned to democracy (+8).

Users of the Polity data series should be aware that Polity measures patterns of authority demonstrated and observed in political behaviors involving interaction events between and within state and non-state entities. Polity measures political practices rather than proclamations. In 2016, CSP changed the coding for Political Competition in the USA to Factional Competition (i.e., POLCOMP=7); this coding change dropped the USA's POLITY score to +8. According to the PITF Global Model, this change to "factional competition" placed the USA at high risk of impending political instability (i.e., adverse regime change and/or onset of political violence). In 2019, CSP changed the USA code for Executive Constraints (EXCONST) from 7 to 6 due to the executive's systematic rejection of congressional oversight. In 2020, the coding for Executive Constraints fell another two points due to the executive's systematic purge of "disloyalists" from the administration, forceful response to protest, villification of the main opposition parties; and undermining public trust in the electoral process, reducing the USA POLITY score for 2020 to +5 (anocracy). The CSP COUP dataset lists an "attempted coup" (COUP=2) for the USA on 6 January 2021. The new executive administration that took office on 20 January 2021 corrected the EXREC deficiencies of the previous administration: the EXCONST code for the USA at the end of 2021 is coded 7 once again; however, the POLCOMP code remains 7 (factional), returning the POLITY score for the USA to +8 in 2021.


NOTE: The Polity5 Regime Narrative for the United States identifies all Polity code changes and
covers the entire period since its date of independence in 1776 through 2020.
For the full list of countries covered by Polity5 Regime Narratives click here.


Current efforts at CSP include updating the Conflict Trends graphs and publication of Global Report 2025.
Polity5 data is now available on the INSCR Data page.

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