Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy
Coppedge et al
In this reading Coppedge et al argue that measuring democracy is necessary, for academics, policy makers and everyone in general that is affected by political decision making. The central point of the article touches on six factors that are necessary for measuring democracy and how other indices of democracy have used these factors.
Definition: The original definition of democracy was 'rule by the people'- The people made the decisions for the nation. However in many cases this has now been modified, in countries such as the United States, many people don't get to vote in fair elections, yet it is still called a democracy. In many ways democracy now means 'rule by the majority'.
Precision: Binary measures of democracy (such as that of Adam Przeworski) are not effective because democracy isn't a fixed state, a country can be more or less democratic than another. Continuous measures such as the EIU are more appropriate, but still flawed.
Coverage/ Sources: Many measures of democracy don't take into account enough countries or a long enough time span. These measures can be biased depending on the sources they rely on.
Coding: Coding is done by experts based on coding criteria. But the criteria isn't always clear, if coding scales are ambiguous then measures of democracy can be inaccurate. Coder accuracy is also a concern, if coders aren't given extensive training it is hard to ensure that they all draw the results from the data when compared to criteria.
Aggregation: Each scale of democracy that is aggregated in a different way will lead to different results being produced. Meaning we aren't able to get a clear picture of the actual state of democracy in some countries.
Validity/ Reliability: Different democracy measures pin different factors against that of democracy and the correlations between these different factors all differ. Therefore it is difficult to obtain agreement between measures that have measured different variables against democracy.
Coppedge et al. then put forward some factors that could be used to make measures of democracy more accurate, these factors are; history of the country and regime, conceptions of democracy, an inclusion of indicators of democracy in each country (elections, suffrage, judicial power, media control), a standardization of data collection and and the taking into account the consequences (payoffs) of the measure.
Sasha - it's worth noting that Coppedge et al argue that instead o giving countries a single "score" for democracy, you should look at a number of different indicators of democracy, and not try to mash them all together (that's a technical term :) in a single grade.
ReplyDeleteAlso worth noting - they argue that there are many different "models" of democracy. Though these are often similar, they are not exactly alike, and would be measured in different ways.