LECTURE 3B – OPERATIONALIZATION OF DEMOCRACY

1. Democracy-Dictatorship (DD) Measure

Democracies  “regimes in which governmental offices are filled as a consequence of

contested elections”

To be democratic: both the chief executive office and the legislature are elected (governmental
offices) + Contestation (multi-party elections + alternation in power) entails three elements:
- ex ante uncertainty: the outcome of the election is unknown before it happens
- ex post irreversibility: the winner of the election actually takes office
- repeatability: elections that meet the first two criteria must occur at regular and
known intervals

A country is classified as a democracy if all of the following conditions apply:

1. The chief executive is elected.
2. The legislature is elected.
3. There is more than one party competing in the elections.
4. An alternation in power under identical electoral rules has taken place.

Dahl´s DD: based on a purely procedural or minimalist view of democracy and dictatorship + it
focuses strongly on Dahl’s notion of contestation + dichotomous measure

Relevant variable  DEMOCRACY (coded 1 if regime is democratic, 0 otherwise)

- A dichotomous measure has only two discrete categories or values (for example,
“dictatorship” or “democracy”).
- A continuous measure can take on any intermediate value within a given range; (for
example, “height in centimeters”).

 Polity IV:

- The Democracy and Autocracy scores for each country both range from 0 to 10.  From
these two measures, a Polity Score is constructed for each country.
- Polity Score = Democracy Score – Autocracy Score
- So, it ranges from -10 (“ideal” autocracy) to +10 (“ideal” democracy).
- In practice, three categories:
- democracies if their Polity Score is +6 to +10
- “anocracy” or “mixed regime” if their Polity Score is between –5 and
+5
- dictatorships if their Polity Score is –10 to –6
- A country’s Polity Score is based on five different attributes or dimensions:
- Competitiveness of executive recruitment
- Openness of executive recruitment
- Executive constraints/decision rules
- Regulation of political participation
- Competitiveness of political participation
- This is very Dahlian in several aspects:
 Unlike DD, it measures democracy along a continuum
 Like DD, it provides a largely procedural measure
 Unlike DD, it captures both contestation and inclusion
  In fact, it actually adds one more dimension: limited government
Relevant variable  POLITY (continuous variable  DEMOC score – AUTOC score (from -10 to
+10)
 Freedom House:

- Independent + nongovernmental org  annual measure of “global freedom” since

1972
- Problem  technically not a measure of democracy

2 dimensions:
- Political rights  electoral process + political pluralism and participation + functioning
of government
- Civil rights  freedom of expression and belief + associational and organizational
rights + rule of law + personal autonomy and individual rights

Each country 2 ratings (for political and civil)  from 1 to 7 (1 most free – 7 least free)  the
average score on each of the two dimensions

Like Dahl  continuum + contestation and inclusion / Unlike Dahl  Substantive definition

In practice, though, many scholars choose to code countries as:

- Free (Democratic): if a country scores 1 to 2.5
- Partly Free (Mixed): if it scores 3 to 5.5
- Not Free (Dictatorship): if it scores 5.5 to 7

Summary of the 3 Indicators:

 DD Measure
- Dichotomous classification of democracy-autocracy
- Annual index between 1946 and 2008
 Polity IV
- Autocracy-democracy index
- Annual index worldwide 1800+
- Classify countries into three types of regimes
 Freedom House
- Index of civil liberties and political rights
- Annual index worldwide since 1972
- Classify countries into three types of regimes

Comparing DD, Polity IV, and FH

- The three different measures of democracy and dictatorship are highly correlated
- This high degree of correlation across the 3 measures is largely driven by uncontroversial
cases
- Unfortunately, there is considerable disagreement among the measures when it comes to
classifying the mixed regimes

Evaluating Measures of Democracy and Dictatorship

1. Conceptualization  the process of creating mental categories that capture the meaning of
objects, events, or ideas:
- Its appropriateness will depend on the researcher´s question
 - It is easier to identify causes with minimalist measures

2. Validity  the extent to which our measures correspond to the concepts that they are
intended to reflect:
- Attributes, Aggregation Issues and Measurement Level

3. Reliability  the extent to which the measurement process repeatedly and consistently
produces the same score for a given case:
- The DD measure of regime type is highly reliable because it is based entirely on
“observables” (and not subjective judgments)

4. Replicability  the ability of third-party scholars to reproduce the process through which a
measure is created (coding rules and disaggregated data):
- DD and Polity IV provide much more detailed and clear coding rules for
constructing their measures of regime type than FH does

4. Boix-Miller-Rosato (BMR)

Two distinguishing features of the measure:

- Its dichotomous nature
- Its coverage from 1800 to 2015

Relevant variable → DEMOCRACY (Dummy variable coded 1 if the regime qualifies as

democratic, and 0 otherwise)

5. V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy)

- One of the largest social science databases with over 350 indicators on democracy and
political systems.
- World-wide coverage from 1900 to the present.
- Transparent and reliable indicators based on the knowledge of 2,500 international experts.
- High-quality research on democracy and policy outreach.