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Rule of Law Index

How people and legal experts in 143 countries experience limits on government power, corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulation, and civil and criminal justice, scored from 0 to 1 by the World Justice Project.

World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators: Rule of Law, 2025

World map of the World Bank rule-of-law score for 2025, light blue for lower scores and dark blue for higher scores, with small economies as dots

World Bank governance score, 0 to 100

  • No data
  • Under 30
  • 30 to 45
  • 45 to 60
  • 60 to 75
  • 75 to 90
  • 90 to 100

Rule-of-law score from 0 to 100 in the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators, 2025, for 215 economies.

Map: Fix Planet, drawn from World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators, 2026 update (CC BY 4.0).

Crime 2025 WJP

What it is

The World Justice Project (WJP), a non-profit organisation, has published the Rule of Law Index every year since 2009. The 2025 edition covers 143 countries and jurisdictions, home to 95% of the world’s population, and draws on more than 215,000 household surveys and 4,100 surveys of legal practitioners and experts. Countries are scored from 0 to 1, where 1 means the strongest adherence to the rule of law, on eight factors: constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice and criminal justice.

Why it matters

The Index measures how the rule of law is experienced in daily life, from safety and the courts to checks on officials. In 2025, the rule of law declined in 68% of countries, up from 57% the year before, making it the eighth year in a row with more declines than improvements. Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and New Zealand rank highest; Venezuela, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti and Nicaragua rank lowest. Qatar joined the Index for the first time.

How to read it

Each score summarises survey answers from ordinary people and legal experts in that country. A decline means a country's score fell from 2024 to 2025; countries that declined lost 1.07% of their score on average, while those that improved gained 0.52%. Factor scores and country profiles are on the WJP Index website. The preview map uses a separate open dataset, the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators: a rule-of-law score from 0 to 100 for 215 economies in 2025, built from 35 cross-country sources of household surveys, firm surveys and expert assessments.

Limits

Some indicators have data for only part of the 143 countries. The World Bank score on the preview map reflects perceptions of contract enforcement, property rights, the police, the courts and the likelihood of crime and violence, and it has its own scale and ranking.

Sources

License

Map: Fix Planet, drawn from World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators, 2026 update (CC BY 4.0).

Open source map →