Number of Independent Democracies and Autocracies in the World Over Time
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 signified the end of the Cold War and the rise of democracy.
The line graph shows the number of UN-member nations that are counted as independent democracies and autocracies in the world from 1900 to 2022. There are consistently more autocracies than democracies until the fall of the soviet union in 1991, when democracies increase globally.