Rule of law in South America

12 countries in South America, 2025. Unit: score 0-100. World ranking →

First in the ranking
74.1 /100
Uruguay
Median country
49.5 /100
half above, half below
Range
22.4 to 74.1
Venezuela - Uruguay

How to read it

Across 12 countries in South America, the highest value is in Uruguay (74.1 /100) and the lowest in Venezuela (22.4 /100).

The median country is at 49.5 /100: half are above, half below.

Rule of Law (RL) captures perceptions of the extent to which agents respect and follow the rules of society, including contract enforcement, property rights, the police, courts, and the likelihood of crime and violence. Governance score is a linear transformation of the governance estimate using hypothetical worst-case and base-case countries. It is an absolute score ranging from 0-100. Larger values correspond to…

Compare selected countries · on the world map

Source: World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators · licence

Rule of law over time

/100

Ranking of countries

2025
In chart Share of the highest value
1Uruguay74.1
2Chile69.8
3Argentina56.9
4Suriname55.0
5Guyana53.5
6Brazil50.6
7Colombia48.3
8Paraguay48.2
9Peru47.8
10Ecuador41.6
11Bolivia36.4
12Venezuela22.4
World Bank, WGI · 2025 · CC BY 4.0 Source and licence

Tick a country in the table to add it to the chart above, up to six at a time. The ranking uses the latest year for which at least half of the countries have a value; countries without a value that year are not listed.