Strong civil society links to features of liberal democracy across 173 countries.
Comparing Key features of liberal democracy with Strong Civil Society Index across 173 countries, 1948–2025.
- Rank correlation
- +0.88
- Holding size constant
- +0.87
- Countries compared
- 173
- Period
- 1948–2025
What might link these
Civil society may foster democratic institutions by enabling civic participation and accountability. However, wealthier nations might score high on both, so GDP remains a plausible confounder.
Why this is not proof of anything
This is a correlation across countries, not an experiment. It cannot show that either indicator causes the other, and both may simply follow a third thing. Correlation does not imply causation; unmeasured factors like historical development could drive both trends.
The second figure above repeats the measurement with national population and income held constant. It is the more conservative number: a relationship that largely disappears there was mostly telling you that larger, richer countries have more of most things.
How this was measured
Both indicators were ranked across every country reporting each, and the two rankings compared — ranks rather than raw values, because a handful of very large countries can otherwise manufacture a relationship on their own. The calculation is arithmetic over figures already published on this site; the commentary above is drafted from the two indicator names and the resulting coefficients.