Rise and Fall of Democracies and Non-Democracies (1950-2020)

Historical trend in the number of democratic versus non-democratic countries, illustrating the growth of democracies and the decline of non-democracies over time

#TidyTuesday
Author

Steven Ponce

Published

November 3, 2024

Figure 1: Line chart showing the rise and fall of democracies and non-democracies globally from 1950 to 2020. The number of democracies has increased steadily since the 1950s, while the number of non-democracies has declined significantly, especially around 1990.

Steps to Create this Graphic

1. Load Packages & Setup

Show code 
## 1. LOAD PACKAGES & SETUP ----
if (!require("pacman")) install.packages("pacman")
pacman::p_load(
    tidyverse,         # Easily Install and Load the 'Tidyverse'
    ggtext,            # Improved Text Rendering Support for 'ggplot2'
    showtext,          # Using Fonts More Easily in R Graphs
    janitor,           # Simple Tools for Examining and Cleaning Dirty Data
    scales,            # Scale Functions for Visualization
    glue,              # Interpreted String Literals
    here,              # A Simpler Way to Find Your Files
    geomtextpath       # Curved Text in 'ggplot2'
)    

### |- figure size ----
camcorder::gg_record(
    dir    = here::here("temp_plots"),
    device = "png",
    width  =  10,
    height =  8,
    units  = "in",
    dpi    = 320
)

### |- resolution ----
showtext_opts(dpi = 320, regular.wt = 300, bold.wt = 800)

2. Read in the Data

Show code 
tt <-tidytuesdayR::tt_load(2024, week = 45) 

democracy_data <- tt$democracy_data |> clean_names() 

tidytuesdayR::readme(tt)
rm(tt)

3. Examine the Data

Show code 
glimpse(democracy_data)

4. Tidy Data

Show code 
### |- tidy data ----

# Line Plot of Democracy Count Over Time 
line_data <- democracy_data |>
    group_by(year) |>
    summarize(
        democratic_count = sum(is_democracy, na.rm = TRUE),
        non_democratic_count = sum(is_communist, na.rm = TRUE)
    ) |>
    ungroup()

5. Visualization Parameters

Show code 
### |- plot aesthetics ----
bkg_col      <- "#f5f5f2"  
title_col    <- "gray20"           
subtitle_col <- "gray20"     
caption_col  <- "gray30"   
text_col     <- "gray20"    

### |-  titles and caption ----
# icons
tt <- str_glue("#TidyTuesday: { 2024 } Week { 45 } &bull; Source: democracyData R Package<br>")
li <- str_glue("<span style='font-family:fa6-brands'>&#xf08c;</span>")
gh <- str_glue("<span style='font-family:fa6-brands'>&#xf09b;</span>")
bs <- str_glue("<span style='font-family:fa6-brands'>&#xe671; </span>")

# text
title_text    <- str_glue("Rise and Fall of Democracies and Non-Democracies (1950-2020)")
subtitle_text <- str_wrap("Historical trend in the number of democratic versus non-democratic countries, 
                          illustrating the growth of democracies and the decline of non-democracies over time",
                          width = 85)
caption_text  <- str_glue("{tt} {li} stevenponce &bull; {bs} sponce1 &bull; {gh} poncest &bull; #rstats #ggplot2")

### |-  fonts ----
font_add('fa6-brands', here::here("fonts/6.6.0/Font Awesome 6 Brands-Regular-400.otf"))
font_add_google("Oswald", regular.wt = 400, family = "title")
font_add_google("Merriweather Sans", regular.wt = 400, family = "subtitle")
font_add_google("Merriweather Sans", regular.wt = 400, family = "text")
font_add_google("Noto Sans", regular.wt = 400, family = "caption")
showtext_auto(enable = TRUE)

### |-  plot theme ----
theme_set(theme_minimal(base_size = 14, base_family = "text"))                

theme_update(
    plot.title.position   = "plot",
    plot.caption.position = "plot",
    legend.position       = "plot",
    plot.background       = element_rect(fill = bkg_col, color = bkg_col),
    panel.background      = element_rect(fill = bkg_col, color = bkg_col),
    plot.margin           = margin(t = 10, r = 20, b = 10, l = 20),
    axis.title.x          = element_text(margin = margin(10, 0, 0, 0), size = rel(1.1), 
                                         color = text_col, family = "text", face = "bold", hjust = 0.5),
    axis.title.y          = element_text(margin = margin(0, 10, 0, 0), size = rel(1.1), 
                                         color = text_col, family = "text", face = "bold", hjust = 0.5),
    axis.text             = element_text(size = rel(0.8), color = text_col, family = "text"),
    axis.ticks.x          = element_line(color = text_col),
    axis.line.x           = element_line(color = "#252525", linewidth = .2),
    panel.grid.minor      = element_blank(),
    panel.grid.major      = element_blank(),
    panel.grid.major.y    = element_line(color = "grey85", size = .4),
)

6. Plot

Show code 
### |- initial plot ----

p <- line_data |>
  ggplot() +

  # Geoms
  geom_ribbon(aes(x = year, ymin = non_democratic_count, ymax = democratic_count), fill = "gray80", alpha = 0.5) +
  geom_textline(
    aes(x = year, y = democratic_count, label = "Democratic Count", color = "Democratic Count"),
    linewidth = 1,
    family = "text",
    size = 4.5,
    offset = unit(0.15, "cm"),
    text_smoothing = 30
  ) +
  geom_textline(
    aes(x = year, y = non_democratic_count, label = "Non-Democratic Count", color = "Non-Democratic Count"),
    linewidth = 1,
    family = "text",
    size = 4.5,
    offset = unit(0.15, "cm"),
    text_smoothing = 30
  ) +

  # Scales
  scale_x_continuous() +
  scale_y_continuous(
    breaks = seq(0, 150, by = 50),
    limits = c(0, 150)
  ) +
  scale_color_manual(values = c(
    "Democratic Count" = "#1B3A54FF",
    "Non-Democratic Count" = "#913914FF"
  )) +
  coord_cartesian(clip = "off") +

  # Labs
  labs(
    x = "Year",
    y = "Count",
    color = "Type",
    title = title_text,
    subtitle = subtitle_text,
    caption = caption_text
  ) +

  # Theme
  theme(
    axis.text.y = ggtext::element_markdown(),
    plot.title = element_text(
      size        = rel(1.75),
      family      = "title",
      face        = "bold",
      color       = title_col,
      margin      = margin(t = 5, b = 5)
    ),
    plot.subtitle = element_text(
      size        = rel(1.1),
      family      = "subtitle",
      color       = title_col,
      lineheight  = 1.1,
      margin      = margin(t = 5, b = 15)
    ),
    plot.caption = element_markdown(
      size        = rel(.65),
      family      = "caption",
      color       = caption_col,
      lineheight  = 0.65,
      hjust       = 0.5,
      halign      = 0.5,
      margin      = margin(t = 10, b = 5)
    ),
  )

7. Save

Show code 
### |-  plot image ----  

# Save the plot as PNG
ggsave(
  filename = here::here("data_visualizations/TidyTuesday/2024/tt_2024_45.png"), 
  plot = p,
  width = 10, height = 8, units = "in", dpi = 320
)

### |-  plot thumbnail----  
magick::image_read(here::here("data_visualizations/TidyTuesday/2024/tt_2024_45.png")) |> 
  magick::image_resize(geometry = "400") |> 
  magick::image_write(here::here("data_visualizations/TidyTuesday/2024/thumbnails/tt_2024_45.png"))

8. Session Info

R version 4.4.1 (2024-06-14 ucrt)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64
Running under: Windows 11 x64 (build 22631)

Matrix products: default


locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.utf8 
[2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.utf8   
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.utf8
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C                          
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.utf8    

time zone: America/New_York
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices datasets  utils     methods   base     

other attached packages:
 [1] geomtextpath_0.1.4 here_1.0.1         glue_1.8.0         scales_1.3.0      
 [5] janitor_2.2.0      showtext_0.9-7     showtextdb_3.0     sysfonts_0.8.9    
 [9] ggtext_0.1.2       lubridate_1.9.3    forcats_1.0.0      stringr_1.5.1     
[13] dplyr_1.1.4        purrr_1.0.2        readr_2.1.5        tidyr_1.3.1       
[17] tibble_3.2.1       ggplot2_3.5.1      tidyverse_2.0.0    pacman_0.5.1      

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] gtable_0.3.5            httr2_1.0.3             xfun_0.47              
 [4] htmlwidgets_1.6.4       gh_1.4.1                tzdb_0.4.0             
 [7] vctrs_0.6.5             tools_4.4.0             generics_0.1.3         
[10] parallel_4.4.0          curl_5.2.2              gifski_1.12.0-2        
[13] fansi_1.0.6             pkgconfig_2.0.3         lifecycle_1.0.4        
[16] farver_2.1.2            compiler_4.4.0          textshaping_0.4.0      
[19] munsell_0.5.1           snakecase_0.11.1        htmltools_0.5.8.1      
[22] usethis_3.0.0           yaml_2.3.10             crayon_1.5.3           
[25] pillar_1.9.0            camcorder_0.1.0         magick_2.8.4           
[28] commonmark_1.9.1        tidyselect_1.2.1        digest_0.6.37          
[31] stringi_1.8.4           labeling_0.4.3          rsvg_2.6.0             
[34] rprojroot_2.0.4         fastmap_1.2.0           grid_4.4.0             
[37] colorspace_2.1-1        cli_3.6.3               magrittr_2.0.3         
[40] utf8_1.2.4              withr_3.0.1             rappdirs_0.3.3         
[43] bit64_4.0.5             timechange_0.3.0        rmarkdown_2.28         
[46] tidytuesdayR_1.0.3.9000 gitcreds_0.1.2          bit_4.0.5              
[49] ragg_1.3.2              hms_1.1.3               evaluate_0.24.0        
[52] knitr_1.48              markdown_1.13           rlang_1.1.4            
[55] gridtext_0.1.5          Rcpp_1.0.13             xml2_1.3.6             
[58] renv_1.0.3              vroom_1.6.5             svglite_2.1.3          
[61] rstudioapi_0.16.0       jsonlite_1.8.8          R6_2.5.1               
[64] systemfonts_1.1.0       fs_1.6.4

9. GitHub Repository

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