Defining Democracies and Dictatorships

Throughout my time at high school, and now at university, I was taught that whenever answering an essay question – whether the subject was English, Biology, or Political Science – I should first ensure to define the most important terms in a few sentences. Although I understood that defining terms would help to frame and clarify my topic, I did this rather hurriedly and thoughtlessly. Definitions felt like something that just needed to be got out of the way so I could concentrate on the more important substance of my argument. Over the past couple of weeks, however, I have come to appreciate the value of definitions and the significant role of defining a concept in subsequently researching and evaluating that concept. For example, depending on how you define relative poverty, you could argue that 200,000 New Zealand children live below the poverty line. Or you could estimate that figure to be upwards of 250,000. This makes a huge difference to policy-makers considering a new social programme designed to help less privileged children. Likewise with measurement tools: you could claim that the United States is thriving economically if you focused on its GDP, but once you take into account the increasing number of hours Americans are working for in low-paid jobs, you get quite a different impression of America’s economic performance.

Here the discussion is centred around defining democracies and dictatorships. The implications arising from such definitions are vast. As Coppedge and Gerring explain, whether or not a regime is perceived as democratic determines how it will be viewed by the international community, how much foreign aid it will receive and how much authority it will have in diplomatic and trade talks. They include some statistics: “USAID spends about $600 million annually on its various democracy and governance programs… SIDA, the Swedish Development Agency, spends $690 million annually to foster democratic governance and human rights.” (Coppedge and Gerring, p.261) Definitions and mechanisms of measurement influence the thinking of policy-makers, as well as the research and conclusions of political scientists and other commentators around the world. In this post, I will discuss the findings firstly of Jennifer Gandhi and, secondly, of Michael Coppedge and John Gerring: how they propose democracy and dictatorships can be defined and what methods of measurement they would use to group states around the world into particular categories or charts.

Gandhi focuses on defining dictatorship and takes a minimalist view in this endeavour. In her opinion, previous definitions encompassing a range of factors – such as elections, civil liberties and representation – have failed as a consequence of being too broad. Broad definitions make it difficult to conduct further research, for example, into the relationship between political regime and economic performance, because there are too many different factors to take into account. Moreover, a multifaceted approach fails to address what lies at the very core of a dictatorial regime, which is the absence of competitive elections. This absence can be observed in all regimes traditionally considered to be dictatorships. Furthermore, Gandhi believes the presence or absence of elections determines how a state’s government will function and what outcomes it will produce, since the existence of competitive elections provides governments with a specific set of incentives. Gandhi draws attention to states which do not have democratic elections, but which may have democratically-elected legislatures or political parties. The existence of some democratic institutions, Gandhi claims, does not exempt these states from being labelled as dictatorships, for they do not have the key requirement of competitive elections which is necessary to become fully democratic. “Political life,” Gandhi writes, “is organised fundamentally differently in systems in which leaders are chosen by competitive elections and in systems when they are not.” (Gandhi, p.10) Gandhi’s definition of a dictatorship, therefore, is simply a regime in which “the government rises to power in the absence of competitive elections.” (Gandhi, p.7) This could be through a coup, a revolution or installation by military powers. In addition, within the category of dictatorship, Gandhi proceeds to create three sub-categories – monarchies, military and civilian dictatorships. Different types of dictatorships have emerged, she believes, because dictators rely on different methods to ensure that they will remain in power. Monarchical dictators have strong networks of family members is high places, military leaders rely on the loyalty of their armed forces, and civilian dictators are supported by specially constructed political groupings within their regime.

Coppedge and Gerring use a markedly different approach when assessing whether or not a regime could be described as democratic. Their aim is to create a measurement quite unlike the aggregated indices (indices formed of separate units collected into a whole) most commonly used by academics, such as Freedom House, Polity and DD. The authors concede that there can never be one single, all-encompassing definition of democracy; since the concept in itself is too complex and subjective. Both definitions that are broad and definitions that are narrow have their own failings. They also acknowledge that there is no one way to measure democracy; every method will in some way be limited or flawed. “The task of constructing a global index of democracy that is valid and precise and universally argued as such,” they write, “is well nigh impossible.” (Coppedge and Gerring p.252) Nevertheless, they are convinced that indices hold great value for policy-makers and academics, since they provide, “a rough empirical estimate of a complex and multidimensional concept.” (Coppedge and Gerring p.252) They see it therefore as important to develop definitions and measurements that are as comprehensive and accurate as possible.

The Coppedge and Gerring approach is to emphasise a multifaceted set of indicators, quite unlike Gandhi’s restricted method, to measure democracy according to a variety of factors. They describe four main features of this approach: a desire to not simply view regimes as static, but to assess states back through history; multidimensional analysis; the collection of information about a variety of aspects; and a specific strategy of presentation. The authors then go on to discuss the six key models of democracy as it has been conventionally viewed: electoral, liberal, majoritarian, participatory, deliberative and egalitarian. They acknowledge the inherent contradictions and conflicts of these models, but conclude that such models are useful empirical devices to compare and contrast regimes over time and in the present. In addition to these six models, Coppedge and Gerring detail 33 specific components of democracy, for example, access to the media and campaign finance, party ideology and religious freedom. Although many of these components overlap, the authors view these as specific concepts which are important in the existence of democracy and which can be successfully and independently measured. In defending a proposed new indice which is highly disaggregated and broad, Coppedge and Gerring argue that their model will allow greater consensus to be achieved on this question of categorising democracies. Their reasoning is that expansive concepts must be broken down into a number of measurable components, which do not yet ignore the complexity of the overall question. The aim is not to rank countries on overall levels of democracy, since agreement has proven impossible as to how this is achieved, but rather, to “clarify how, specifically, one country’s democratic features differ from others in the region, or across regions.” (Coppedge and Gerring p.259)

My personal instinct is to feel more compelled by Coppedge and Gerring’s argument than by Gandhi’s. Gandhi’s minimalist approach is appealing, because it seems like a simple and practical way to label regimes and it seems that such studies would be relatively easy and uncontroversial to conduct. However, I would be tempted to define this approach, (since we are talking about definitions after all,) as reductionist. Gandhi argues that there are many aspects to a democracy, but that the presence of competitive elections is the most crucial aspect. However, she does not fully elaborate on this point, and she does not fully explain the concept of competitive elections. After reading Levitsky and Way’s discussion of competitive authoritarianism – in that, even though states have competitive elections, these elections often operate on an uneven playing field – I feel unconvinced by Gandhi’s reasoning. Gandhi also does not concede and defend the limitations of her own argument, which further reduces its legitimacy. I believe that Gandhi’s approach has its uses – when one wants to quickly assess regime types for a minor project – but I hope that policy-makers and academics would turn to a more rigorous and comprehensive indice, such as Coppedge and Gerring’s, when assessing different regimes. It is important to realise the true complexity of these issues and to recognise the myriad of differences between regimes around the world.