World Cup results increasingly favor democratic nations, analysis finds

Democratic countries have come to dominate the later stages of the men’s World Cup, according to an analysis by John A. Tures, a political science professor at LaGrange College. His review matters because the tournament has also been used by authoritarian governments to promote themselves on a global stage.

Tures examined World Cup results from 1930 through 2018 and compared team performance with political-system data. He also reviewed the 48-team field for the 2026 tournament using Freedom House ratings.

The early history of the competition looked different, according to Tures. Fascist Italy hosted and won the 1934 World Cup under Benito Mussolini, and Italy won again in 1938. In 1978, Argentina’s military dictatorship hosted the tournament and used the national team’s victory as part of an effort to improve its image during a period of repression, Tures wrote.

How the comparison was made

For tournaments from 1930 to 2018, Tures used Polity data, which scores political systems on a scale from minus 10 to plus 10. In that system, countries scoring plus 6 to plus 10 are classified as democracies, those from minus 6 to minus 10 as autocracies, and those in between as anocracies.

For World Cups from 1974 through 2026, Tures also used Freedom House ratings. Freedom House classifies countries as free, partly free or not free based on political rights and civil liberties.

The early decades were not led by democracies, according to Tures. From 1930 through 1962, World Cup champions included two authoritarian teams, Italy in 1934 and 1938; three anocratic teams, Uruguay in 1930 and 1950 and Brazil in 1962; and two democratic teams, West Germany in 1954 and Brazil in 1958 before its dictatorship.

Finals during that period also reflected the same pattern, Tures found. In the first 32 years of the tournament, six finalists were authoritarian countries, four were anocracies and four were democracies.

Democracies have dominated recent finals

The shift began with the 1966 final, which Tures identified as the first World Cup final between two democracies, England and West Germany. England won that match.

Since then, Tures found only two authoritarian champions through 2018: Brazil in 1970 and Argentina in 1978. The 10 winners from 1982 through 2018 were all democracies, and all runners-up since 1962 were democracies, according to his review.

Across the full 1930-2018 period, Polity data showed that 71.4% of World Cup finalists were democracies, Tures wrote. Less than 20% were autocratic countries, and 9.5% were anocracies.

Freedom House data showed an even stronger pattern from 1974 onward, according to Tures. Free countries accounted for 23 of 26 finalists, or 88%, and produced 11 champions. Brazil in 1994 was the only partly free winner in that period, while Argentina in 1978 was the only not free winner.

What the 2026 field shows

The 2026 tournament field includes 48 countries. Tures found that 43.1% are rated free by Freedom House, while 26.7% are rated not free.

Tures compared that with the first World Cup year covered by Freedom House data, 1974, when free countries made up 27% of the world’s nations and not free countries accounted for 41.4%.

The highest-ranked teams in the 2026 field also skew democratic, according to Tures. He found that the top 11 teams in FIFA’s rankings are all rated free, and that among the top 19, only Morocco and Ecuador are not rated free; Freedom House lists both as partly free.

At the other end of the tournament field, Tures found that more than half of the 11 lowest-ranked teams are unfree. He argued that the pattern undercuts attempts by authoritarian governments to use soccer for propaganda, even as FIFA faces scrutiny over the human rights records of some host nations.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.