As the United Nations prepares to pontificate on how democracies defend themselves, it might be useful to remember that across the United Nations’ 193 member states, a substantial proportion are not democratic. According to the 2025 V-Dem report, about 90 states qualify as autocracies, either “electoral autocracies” or “closed autocracies.” Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2025 survey classifies 59 countries as “Not Free,” meaning citizens lack basic political rights and civil liberties. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2024 offers a similar perspective, designating 59 of the 167 states it surveys as authoritarian. Although methodologies differ, these datasets all indicate that roughly one-third to nearly half of UN members fall outside democratic governance.
A handful of states are unambiguous theocracies. Iran and Afghanistan are clear examples, while Saudi Arabia is often described as a theocratic monarchy. Military juntas are rarer but currently in power in about eight UN members, including Myanmar, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea, Chad, Sudan, and Gabon.
Sources
V-Dem 2025 report: https://v-dem.net/documents/54/v-dem_dr_2025_lowres_v1.pdf
Freedom House 2025: https://freedomhouse.org/…/FITW_World2025digitalN.pdf
EIU Democracy Index 2024: https://www.eiu.com/n/democracy-index-2024/
Stephen J. Williams 