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The ARAC Global Stability Analytics Dashboard

Fragility pressure, transformation and governance performance, and democratic institutions, held as three independent lenses rather than fused into a single score.

Why three independent sources

Specification section 04. Triangulate, do not collapse.

The three sources observe different parts of the same broader stability system. FSI emphasises pressures and fragility. BTI adds transformation status and governance performance. V-Dem disaggregates democratic institutions, participation, liberties, checks and balances, deliberation, and equality. Used together they show where measures converge, where they tell different stories, and where a single-source reading would be incomplete. Provider scores remain authoritative within their own method and scale, and this application does not fuse them into a synthetic master index.

Fragile States Index

through-2024 · The Fund for Peace. (2017). Fragile States Index methodology and CAST framework.

  • Higher FSI values indicate greater fragility pressure, meaning a worse outcome.
  • The Fund for Peace emphasises within-country trend over simple rank comparison.
  • Rank is stored as an ordinal string such as "7th" and is parsed, not cast.
  • The application does not reproduce the proprietary CAST software or its current automated methodology.

Bertelsmann Transformation Index

2026 (editions 2006-2026) · Bertelsmann Stiftung. (2026). BTI 2026 methodology and codebook.

  • BTI is biennial. The application must not invent annual values between editions.
  • BTI assesses 137 transformation countries and excludes consolidated OECD democracies.
  • Numeric measures are stored as text in the hosted file, with "-" denoting missing.
  • Column names in the hosted file carry leading whitespace; the adapter preserves the raw name for querying and exposes a trimmed label.
  • Higher BTI values generally indicate stronger transformation or governance, subject to individual variable definitions.

Varieties of Democracy

v16 · Coppedge, M., Gerring, J., Knutsen, C. H., Lindberg, S. I., Teorell, J., et al. (2026). V-Dem Country-Year Dataset v16. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds26

  • Variable scales are variable-specific. The five high-level democracy indices are 0-1; other variables are not.
  • The dataset includes historical polities and non-sovereign entities that must not be joined to modern map geometry.
  • Companion fields (_codelow, _codehigh, _sd, _nr) exist for some variables only and must be verified before querying.
  • V-Dem advises strongly against using point estimates where three or fewer coders contributed.

Concept crosswalk

Version 2.0.0. An analytic map, not a claim of measurement equivalence.

Security and cohesion

ARAC use: Pressure and conflict environment

FSI measures pressure, BTI measures assessed conflict management, and V-Dem measures institutional and civic conditions. These are related constructs, not the same measurement.

  • fsi [approved] CAST cohesion and social pressure indicators.
  • bti [approved] Stateness, conflict intensity, and cleavage management criteria.
  • vdem [approved] Physical integrity and state-linked violence. Approved, Phase 2 audit response Q1.
  • vdem [approved] Civic-space pressure and organisational openness. Approved, Phase 2 audit response Q1.
  • vdem [approved] Protection and treatment across social groups. Approved, Phase 2 audit response Q1.
  • vdem [excluded] NOT approved as cohesion proxies. Despite its label, v2pscohesv measures legislative party cohesion rather than societal cohesion, and v2psprlnks is not a direct security or cohesion proxy. Excluded from this domain and from any default view.

Governance and state capacity

ARAC use: Capacity, performance, and institutional constraint

BTI governance measures assessed political management performance. V-Dem measures institutional constraint. FSI measures perceived pressure on legitimacy and services. Convergence is informative; equivalence is not implied.

  • fsi [approved] CAST political and public-service pressure indicators.
  • bti [approved] Governance Index and its constituent criteria.
  • vdem [approved] Rule of law and individual liberty institutional environment. Approved, Phase 2 audit response Q1.
  • vdem [approved] Judicial and legislative constraints on the executive. Approved.
  • vdem [approved] Executive constitutional compliance. Approved.
  • vdem [approved] Rigorous and impartial public administration. Approved.
  • vdem [approved] Transparent laws with predictable enforcement. Approved, but carries a v16 convergence caution that must travel with every observation.
  • vdem [approved] Judicial independence, high and lower courts. Approved.
  • vdem [approved] Judicial compliance, high court and judiciary generally. Approved.
  • vdem [approved] Legislative oversight and investigative capacity. Approved. Coverage is lower than most V-Dem variables because entities without a legislature have no value.
  • vdem [approved] Governance integrity and corruption facet. Approved ONLY as integrity measures. They are not substitutes for the BTI Governance Index and not measures of state capacity, and their directionality stays source-native.
  • vdem [approved] Participatory-governance context. Approved as a supporting measure, not a capacity measure, and it carries a v16 convergence caution that must travel with every observation.

Rights and democratic resilience

ARAC use: Institutional resilience and rights

BTI Democracy Status and the V-Dem high-level indices overlap substantively but rest on different methodologies and scales. FSI P3 is a pressure lens, not a rights index.

  • fsi [approved] Human rights and rule of law pressure indicator.
  • bti [approved] Democracy Status and its rule-of-law and participation criteria.
  • vdem [approved] The five high-level democracy indices, each on a 0-1 scale.

Socioeconomic transformation and stress

ARAC use: Structural and economic pressure

V-Dem is not primarily an economic-transformation dataset. Appendix A requires that any external economic variables be separately attributed rather than presented as V-Dem measures.

  • fsi [approved] CAST economic and demographic pressure indicators.
  • bti [approved] Economy Status and its market, welfare, and performance criteria.
  • vdem [excluded] Excluded. V-Dem is not a primary economic-transformation source, per Appendix A.

External and regional exposure

ARAC use: External dependence, cooperation, and exposure

No single V-Dem equivalent exists. Only variables with an explicit definition may be linked here, and each must be labelled experimental until curated.

  • fsi [approved] CAST external intervention pressure indicator.
  • bti [approved] International and regional cooperation criteria.
  • vdem [excluded] No direct equivalent. Excluded pending explicit definition.

V-Dem caution registry

Seeded from the official v16 Cautionary Notes. Rebuilt, never carried forward, on a dataset version change.

23 variables carry a convergence caution in v16. V-Dem also advises strongly against using point estimates where three or fewer coders contributed, which the application checks only where a _nr companion field exists.

v2caautmob, v2caconmob, v2caviol, v2cltrnslw, v2csgender, v2dlencmps, v2eldonate, v2elpaidig, v2elpdcamp, v2elpubfin, v2elrgstry, v2exdjcbhg, v2exdjdshg, v2peedueq, v2pepwrses, v2pscohesv, v2psprlnks, v2regoppgroupssize, v2smforads, v2smonper, v2x_cspart, v2xeg_eqaccess, v2xeg_eqdr