Just discovered @MaxCRoser and his incredible data visualizations. Here’s one showing how democracy, autocracy and colonialism has changed over the last 100 years:
(note: The figure doesn’t scale very clearly; here’s a link to a Washington Post article about it with much larger and clearer graphic.)
It’s amazing what a small percentage of the world’s population lived in a democracy in 1900 (around 10%). Thankfully that number climbed significantly over the century.
*except for the small percentage listed as “no data”! The “no data” category disappeared around mid-century and is making a comeback. I’m curious what “no data” means and why it’s on the rise. Would Yemen qualify?