Plotting change and level of electoral democracy in R

democracy_overtime.R

# Libraries
# If vdemdata is not installed run below:
#install.packages("devtools")
#devtools::install_github("vdeminstitute/vdemdata", force = TRUE)
library(tidyverse)
library(vdemdata)

# Overhead
set.seed(1904)
theme_set(theme_bw())  

## Lineplot 
vdem |> 
  filter(e_regiongeo %in% c(1,2,3,4)) |>  # set the region based on V-Dem codebook
  filter(year > 2010) |>   # set the years
  drop_na(v2x_polyarchy) |> 
  ggplot(aes(x = year, y = v2x_polyarchy)) +
  geom_line() +
  facet_wrap(~country_name, ncol = 8) + 
  labs(title= "Electoral Democracy in Europe between 2010-2023",
       x = "Year",
       y = "V-Dem Polyarchy")
  

# Diverging bar chart
df_vdem <- 
  vdem |> 
  dplyr::select(country_name, country_text_id,
                year, v2x_polyarchy,e_regiongeo) |>
  filter(year %in% c(2010, 2023)) |>       # set the years
  filter(e_regiongeo %in% c(1,2,3,4)) |>   # set the region based on V-Dem codebook 
  group_by(country_name) |> 
  mutate(delta_democracy = v2x_polyarchy - lag(v2x_polyarchy),
         democracy_type = ifelse(delta_democracy < 0, "below", 
                                  ifelse(delta_democracy == 0, "unchanged", "above"))) |> 
  drop_na(delta_democracy) 

df_vdem <- df_vdem[order(df_vdem$delta_democracy), ]  # sort
df_vdem$country_name <- factor(df_vdem$country_name, levels = df_vdem$country_name)  # convert to factor to retain sorted order in plot.

# Diverging Barcharts
df_vdem |> 
  ungroup() |> 
  ggplot(aes(x=country_name, y=delta_democracy, label=delta_democracy)) + 
  geom_bar(stat='identity', aes(fill=democracy_type), width=.5)  +
  scale_fill_manual(name="Democracy", 
                    labels = c("Improved", "Decreased"), 
                    values = c("above"="#00ba38", "below"="#f8766d")) + 
  labs(subtitle="Changes in Electoral Democracy between 2010-2023", 
       title= "Democratic Declines",
       x = "Democratization",
       y = "Country Name") + 
  coord_flip()