Freedom of expression during each national leader's tenure, worldwide

The leaders of 40 countries since 1991, ranked against one another by how the freedom of expression changed from their first day in office, each on its own country's figures. Politare shows what happened during a tenure; it does not claim the office-holder caused it.

#	Office-holder	Place	In office	Total	Per year	Chart
1	Ivica Račan	Croatia Prime Minister	27 Jan 2000 – 23 Dec 2003	+34.9 points 1999 → 2003	+8.7 points/yr
2	N Viktor Yushchenko	Ukraine President	23 Jan 2005 – 25 Feb 2010	+27.1 points 2004 → 2009	+5.4 points/yr
3	Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva	Brazil President	1 Jan 2023 – now	+20.6 points 2022 → 2025	+6.9 points/yr
4	Moon Jae-in	South Korea President	10 May 2017 – 10 May 2022	+18.9 points 2016 → 2021	+3.8 points/yr
5	Ernesto Zedillo	Mexico President	1 Dec 1994 – 1 Dec 2000	+10.6 points 1994 → 2000	+1.8 points/yr
6	Mikuláš Dzurinda	Slovakia Prime Minister	30 Oct 1998 – 4 Jul 2006	+10.5 points 1998 → 2006	+1.3 points/yr
7	Zlatko Mateša	Croatia Prime Minister	7 Nov 1995 – 27 Jan 2000	+9.7 points 1995 → 1999	+2.4 points/yr
8	Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu	Romania Prime Minister	29 Dec 2004 – 22 Dec 2008	+8.4 points 2004 → 2008	+2.1 points/yr
9	N Leonid Kravchuk	Ukraine President	23 Jul 1990 – 19 Jul 1994 from 1991	+8.1 points 1991 → 1994	+2.7 points/yr
10	Alberto Fernández	Argentina President	10 Dec 2019 – 10 Dec 2023	+7.8 points 2019 → 2023	+1.9 points/yr

Showing 10 of 189 tenures.

Sorted by total, highest first. Rows measure V-Dem's freedom of expression and alternative sources of information index, 0 to 1 shown as 0 to 100; yearly; each place is read from its own statistics office's series (the row's chart names it), so a change is set against the place's own first day, never against another country's level. Every row is indexed to the last month, quarter or count complete before the first day in office ("from" marks a start that had to move because that period had no data, or because the period cut it). Changes are differences in points; "per year" divides them by the years in office. Tenures with under 12 months, or under three observations, are left out. Data as of Sep 2026.