World Justice Project Index Reports Decline in Global Checks and Balances Across 77 Percent of Nations

A sweeping report on the state of global legal systems has found that executive authorities across the globe continue to consolidate power while weakening institutional constraints. According to the latest Rule of Law Index released by the World Justice Project, an independent, nonpartisan research group, checks and balances—including judicial oversight, legislative scrutiny, and free press protections—have deteriorated in 77 percent of countries surveyed since 2016. The organization’s multi-year study measures governance and legal practices across 142 countries and jurisdictions, representing roughly 95 percent of the global population. The Index evaluates eight core pillars of legal systems: constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, and criminal justice. The latest data reveals that over six billion people currently live in states where the overall rule of law is weaker today than it was eight years ago. Declines in constraints on government power were accompanied by broad contractions in human rights guarantees. The report documented a loss of fundamental rights protections in 81 percent of assessed nations over the same eight-year span. Independent courts and judicial bodies in multiple regions face increasing political pressure, administrative delays, and procedural hurdles that complicate the timely delivery of civil justice. Despite the overarching downward trend in governmental checks and balances, the assessment identified notable progress in specific areas of judicial and administrative performance. For the first time in five years, more countries recorded improvements in curbing corruption than experienced declines. Nearly three-fifths, or 59 percent, of evaluated nations registered positive movement on the index's absence of corruption metric. In addition, a majority of countries demonstrated progress in administering effective criminal justice systems, while declines in civil justice delivery slowed relative to the peak disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Legal experts noted that targeted institutional reforms and automated case-management systems have helped several national court structures reduce systemic backlogs. William H. Neukom, co-founder and president of the World Justice Project, emphasized that while long-term declines in institutional accountability present significant challenges, ongoing judicial modernizations warrant recognition. Neukom stated that acknowledging achievements in anti-corruption and legal administration is vital to encouraging sustained institutional reform worldwide. The global rankings showed consistency at the top, with Nordic and western European nations leading the overall scores. Denmark secured the highest ranking, followed in order by Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Germany. These top five positions remained unchanged from the preceding annual index, reflecting enduring institutional stability and robust statutory protections across their court systems. Conversely, the lowest scores in the index were recorded in Venezuela, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Myanmar. The countries registering the sharpest single-year declines included Myanmar, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, where independent judicial review and institutional limitations on executive authorities faced pronounced contractions. The report also highlighted jurisdictions that reversed earlier declines following political transitions and legal reforms. Poland, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka showed the greatest single-year improvements across aggregate legal indicators. In Poland and Brazil, recent democratic elections led to renewed commitments by national leadership to restore constitutional norms and judicial independence following years of institutional friction. The World Justice Project compiled the index through more than 214,000 household interviews alongside surveys of over 3,500 legal practitioners, constitutional scholars, and judicial experts. Multilateral institutions, legal aid foundations, and commercial bodies rely on the dataset to gauge regulatory predictability, contract enforcement, and institutional resilience across international jurisdictions.