Country profile
Holy See
La Santa Sede (Stato della Citta del Vaticano)
Europe · Southern Europe
VA · VAT
- Capital
- Vatican City
- Population
- 882
- Area
- 0 km²
- Democracy index
- 12
- Regime type
- Closed Autocracy
Events
Ballots from Holy See
The latest elections, referendums, and opinion polls from Holy See. Community totals are not official results.
No published ballots yet
No public ballots yet
Check back later or explore the global feed.
Classification
Democracy profile
The score and regime label are assigned by Porto Voto using our in-house democracy index and classification framework, not ratings from governments or external agencies.
Democracy index
12/100
Regime type
Closed Autocracy
The Holy See operates as an absolute elective monarchy where the Pope holds supreme legislative, executive, and judicial authority. Governance is managed through the Roman Curia, with no institutional framework for democratic competition, representative elections, or public oversight of leadership selection. While the state provides a unique legal and administrative structure for the global administration of the Catholic Church, it does not function as a democracy. Civil liberties and political rights are defined by ecclesiastical law rather than secular democratic norms, and there is no space for political opposition or public dissent within the governance structure. The concentration of power in the hands of the pontiff and his appointed officials remains total, precluding the development of any competitive electoral system or independent institutional checks and balances.
Last evaluation:
How we classify regimes →World Factbook
Country background
A concise introduction to Holy See, together with notes on how power and law are organized, to put local ballots in context.
Popes in their secular role ruled portions of the Italian peninsula for more than a thousand years until the mid-19th century, when the newly established Kingdom of Italy seized many of the Papal States. In 1870, the pope's holdings were further circumscribed when Rome itself was annexed. Disputes between Italy and a series of "prisoner" popes were resolved in 1929 by three Lateran Treaties, which established the independent state of Vatican City and granted Roman Catholicism special status in Italy.
In 1984, a concordat between the Holy See and Italy modified some of the earlier treaty provisions, including the primacy of Roman Catholicism as the Italian state religion. Present concerns of the Holy See include religious freedom, threats against minority Christian communities in Africa and the Middle East, the plight of refugees and migrants, climate change and the environment, conflict and war, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence, sexual misconduct by clergy, humanitarian issues, interreligious dialogue and reconciliation, and the application of church doctrine in an era of rapid change and globalization. About 1.3 billion people worldwide profess Catholicism, the world's largest Christian faith.