Our World
in Data
Oxford Martin School logoUniversity of Oxford logoGlobal Change Data Lab logo
Data

Separation of Powers Score

See all data and research on:
Democracy

What you should know about this indicator

  • Score of 1: There is no separation of powers, neither de jure nor de facto.
  • Score of 4: The separation of powers is formally established but weak in practice. One branch, generally the executive, has largely undermined checks and balances.
  • Score of 7: The separation of powers is in place and functioning. Checks and balances are occasionally subject to interference, but a restoration of balance is sought.
  • Score of 10: There is a clear separation of powers with mutual checks and balances.
  • The remaining scores are intermediate categories.
Separation of Powers Score
Indicates the extent of mutual checks and balances on political powers.
Source
Bertelsmann Transformation Index (2026) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
March 27, 2026
Next expected update
March 2027
Date range
2005–2025

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Bertelsmann Transformation Index – Bertelsmann Transformation Index, Scores

Throughout the world, democracy and a market economy have become powerful frameworks in which social sustainability can prosper. Successful processes of reform can be observed in every region of the globe. There are, however, no guarantees of success; many countries undergoing transformation face stagnation and power struggles or violence and even state failure. Good governance is pivotal to reform policies that work. What are the key decisions? What are the lessons to be learned from past experiences? What strategies are likely to succeed? Under which conditions? The BTI 2026 puts development and transformation policies to the test.

Advocating reforms aimed at supporting the development of a constitutional democracy and a socially responsible market economy, the BTI provides the framework for an exchange of good practices among agents of reform. The BTI publishes two rankings, the Status Index and the Governance Index, both of which are based on in-depth assessments of 137 countries. The Status Index ranks the countries according to the state of their democracy and market economy, while the Governance Index ranks them according to their respective leadership’s performance. Distributed among the dimensions of democracy, market economy and governance, a total of 17 criteria are subdivided into 49 indicators.

BTI countries are selected according to the following criteria: They have yet to achieve a fully consolidated democracy and market economy, have populations of more than one million, and are recognized as sovereign states.

The Transformation Index project is managed by the Bertelsmann Stiftung.

Retrieved on
March 27, 2026
Retrieved from
https://bti-project.org/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Bertelsmann Stiftung. 2026. Bertelsmann Transformation Index 2026.

Throughout the world, democracy and a market economy have become powerful frameworks in which social sustainability can prosper. Successful processes of reform can be observed in every region of the globe. There are, however, no guarantees of success; many countries undergoing transformation face stagnation and power struggles or violence and even state failure. Good governance is pivotal to reform policies that work. What are the key decisions? What are the lessons to be learned from past experiences? What strategies are likely to succeed? Under which conditions? The BTI 2026 puts development and transformation policies to the test.

Advocating reforms aimed at supporting the development of a constitutional democracy and a socially responsible market economy, the BTI provides the framework for an exchange of good practices among agents of reform. The BTI publishes two rankings, the Status Index and the Governance Index, both of which are based on in-depth assessments of 137 countries. The Status Index ranks the countries according to the state of their democracy and market economy, while the Governance Index ranks them according to their respective leadership’s performance. Distributed among the dimensions of democracy, market economy and governance, a total of 17 criteria are subdivided into 49 indicators.

BTI countries are selected according to the following criteria: They have yet to achieve a fully consolidated democracy and market economy, have populations of more than one million, and are recognized as sovereign states.

The Transformation Index project is managed by the Bertelsmann Stiftung.

Retrieved on
March 27, 2026
Retrieved from
https://bti-project.org/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Bertelsmann Stiftung. 2026. Bertelsmann Transformation Index 2026.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Separation of Powers Score”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2013) - “Democracy”. Data adapted from Bertelsmann Transformation Index. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260327-184752/grapher/separation-of-powers-score-bti.html [online resource] (archived on March 27, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Bertelsmann Transformation Index (2026) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Bertelsmann Transformation Index (2026) – processed by Our World in Data. “Separation of Powers Score” [dataset]. Bertelsmann Transformation Index, “Bertelsmann Transformation Index, Scores” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260327-184752/grapher/separation-of-powers-score-bti.html (archived on March 27, 2026).

Download

Quick download

Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

Download full data

Includes all entities and time points

Download displayed data

Includes only the entities and time points currently visible in the chart

Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/separation-of-powers-score-bti.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/separation-of-powers-score-bti.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/separation-of-powers-score-bti.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/separation-of-powers-score-bti.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/separation-of-powers-score-bti.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/separation-of-powers-score-bti.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/separation-of-powers-score-bti.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/separation-of-powers-score-bti.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear