About the project
Erosion is measured nationally. It happens locally.
The U.S. Subnational Democratic Erosion Event Database is a research project at William & Mary, led by Professor Settle. It documents democratic-erosion events across all 50 states from 2008 to 2024, alongside the methodology, codebook, and validation work behind them.
The problem
A national score cannot see a state.
Most established measures of democratic backsliding rate a whole country at a time. That is a reasonable way to compare nations to each other, and a poor way to see the United States, where elections are administered by states, courts are constituted by states, and most of the machinery that can erode is state machinery.
So DEED changes the unit. Instead of one score per country per year, it records discrete, coded events — each one placed in a state, in a year, and in a category defined by the codebook. Counting them is what makes comparison across states, and change over time, possible at all.
The usual shape
One score, for one country, once a year. Whatever happened in a given state is averaged into a single national number — or missed entirely.
DEED's shape
One record per event: what happened, where, when, and which category it falls under. Patterns can be counted, compared across states, and traced over time.
Schematic — illustrative shapes, not data.
“A journalist comes because something has happened in their state and they want more context. They should be able to navigate to a page about their state, and see all the resources that are available.”
Who it is for
Journalists
Something happened in your state. Find what it was, what preceded it, and who to ask.
Researchers
A coded, citable event record with the codebook and validation work published alongside it.
Policymakers
Compare your state against the other 49 on the same definitions, over the same years.
Students
Coursework, resource guides, and research assistantships on the project itself.
Status
Where the project is now
2008–2024
The coverage window
Every event in the database falls inside these 17 years, across all 50 states.
Now
Coding and validation
Events are being coded against the codebook, with inter-coder reliability checks and source review.
2027
Public release
The dataset, methodology, codebook, and documentation published for open research use.
This site is an early preview of the structure and design. Every figure on it comes from a synthetic sample, not from the DEED dataset.
For W&M students
Coursework, resource guides, and ways to join the project.
DEED is built largely by William & Mary students — research assistants coding events, student leadership managing the work, and coursework built around the data.