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Understanding Democracy Evaluation: A Comprehensive Guide

Explore methods to systematically measure liberal democracy, criteria expectations, dimensions analysis, and use of quantitative indicators like Freedom House Scores. Learn how to assess political rights and civil liberties effectively.

gretchen-medina
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Understanding Democracy Evaluation: A Comprehensive Guide

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  1. Measuring democracy: Can it be done?

  2. Problem: • How can we systematically assess whether a country is a liberal democracy or not?

  3. Solutions: • Clarify what you mean: decide what kinds of criteria you should assess • Consider whether you can develop operational measures for the criteria you want to assess • Decide whether these should be qualitative (judgmental) or quantitative

  4. Criteria: What do we expect to find in a democracy? • Inclusiveness • all or almost all of the adult population entitled to vote • Elections • free and fair elections -- elections with choice • Competition for power – public contestation

  5. Dimensions of liberal democracy:

  6. Using quantitative indicators What are they? • Numerical indicators, sometimes based on quantitative data – e.g. Gross national product • Sometimes based on expert judgments, e.g. placing a country on a scale • Examples: • Freedom House Scores • Human development index

  7. Freedom House Scores • Freedom House: • an NGO or non-profit org. dating from World War II • Assesses democracy in 193 countries by examining the availability of • Political rights • civil liberties • Uses reports, assessments by scholars & experts to rate each country on a 7 point scale: • 1 is high…………......7 is low www.freedomhouse.org

  8. Political rights: 10 scales in three subcategories • Electoral Process (3 questions) • Political Pluralism and Participation (4) • Functioning of Government (3)

  9. Civil liberties: 15 scales in four categories • Freedom of Expression and Belief (4 questions) • Associational and Organizational Rights (3) • Rule of Law (4) • Personal Autonomy & Individual Rights (4)

  10. Overall ratings • Free = mean score of 1.0 - 2.5 • Partially Free = mean score 3.0 – 5.0 • Not free = mean score 5.5 - 7.0 Some scores

  11. Freedom in the World 2007: Country Subscores

  12. Library Session: • Friday, September 21st, L1015

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