Global performance indicators such as democracy ratings shape foreign policy, aid, and investment—and many rely on expert assessments that are often treated as objective. This article examines whether and how the national identity of raters influences those assessments.

🔎 How the evidence was collected

• Two complementary data sources were used: an original survey of experts on Uganda and expert-coded data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute.
• Both sources compare ratings supplied by national (country-affiliated) experts with ratings supplied by non-national experts for the same cases.

📈 Key findings

• Systematic, statistically significant differences exist between national and non-national expert ratings.
• In most cases, nationals give more positive democracy ratings than non-nationals.

🧭 What might explain the gap

• Information access and consumption: nationals may rely on different sources or have deeper local information that shapes more favorable assessments.
• Divergent conceptions of democracy: national experts may apply different standards or emphasize different democratic dimensions.
• In-group–out-group bias: an evaluative preference for one’s own country can inflate nationals’ scores.
• Empirical tests provide some support for each of these mechanisms, though none alone fully accounts for the observed differences.

⚠️ Why this matters

• Because democracy ratings influence real-world decisions and scholarly inference, rater identity can introduce systematic bias into global performance indicators.
• This concern is especially salient given that many influential indicators are produced by organizations based in the Global North; awareness of rater composition and potential biases is essential for interpreters of these measures.