Democracy vs Trade Openness Research Parser & Dashboard

Group Research Project for PSC354 at University at Buffalo. Contains Python Script for parsing V-Dem Democracy Scores and the KOF Globalization Index, visualizing the relationship between democracy scores and trade openness across different countries and regime categories from 1970–2020. Also contains a Dash web application that visualizes the data for sharing and presentation purposes.

Website Link: https://insistent-vague-lanserver-sameerjain501.replit.app/

Dashboard

Excel Page

Features

• Individual country analysis with regime type indicators
• Aggregate analysis by V-Dem Regime Category
• Dark Blue Theming

Project Structure

• app.py – Dash application
• psc_354_research_project_fileparser_vdem_and_kof.py – Data processing script
• documented_code – Commented versions of files
• democracy_trade_analysis.xlsx – Parsed dataset
• assets/style.css – More specific styling for web app

Installation

1. Requires Python 3.11+

2. Install dependencies:

   pip install dash dash-bootstrap-components flask matplotlib openpyxl pandas plotly xlsxwriter

Running the App

1. Launch:

   python app.py

2. Visit:

   • Local: http://0.0.0.0:8050

Data Sources

• V-Dem Dataset – Democracy scores + regime types

  • https://v-dem.net/data/the-v-dem-dataset/
  • https://v-dem.net/

• KOF Globalization Index Dataset – Trade openness values

  • https://kof.ethz.ch/prognosen-indikatoren/indikatoren/kof-globalisierungsindex.html
  • https://ethz.ch/de.html

Visualizations

Country-Specific:

• Democracy Score (blue line)
• Trade Openness (green line)
• Regime indicators
• Missing data (light red)

Regime Category:

• Aggregated trends
• 2×2 grid layout for comparison

Regime Type Legend

• Liberal Democracy → Green
• Electoral Democracy → Blue
• Electoral Autocracy → Red
• Closed Autocracy → Dark blue

Tech-Stack

• Dash (frontend)
• Plotly (graphs)
• Pandas (data)
• Bootstrap (styling)