Conferences

In the empirical research on democracy, a shift from the development of typologies of regimes to the measurement of aspects of the quality of a democratic regime can be recognized. The question no longer is ‘democracy or not’ but ‘what makes a democracy good or better’ (e.g. Altman/Pérez-Liñán 2002; Berg-Schlosser 2004; Diamond/Morlino 2004; Morlino 2004; Plattner 2004). In this regard, the attitudes and the assessments of democratic regimes by the citizens themselves are seen as important instruments to evaluate the quality of democracies. In other words: the traditional research on political culture more and more meets the concern of measuring democracies (Pickel/Pickel 2006).

However, hitherto existing and widely used quantitative measurements of democracy such as the index of Vanhanen (1990, 2003), the Polity Index (Jaggers/Gurr 1995) or Freedom House (Gastil 1990; Puddington/ Piano 2005) are neither able to measure fine grained differences in the quality of democracies nor do they integrate the views of citizens. This is partly due to their focus on institutional settings only, due to their minimalist concept of democracy or due to methodological shortcomings (Lauth 2004; Munck/Verkuilen 2002).

Thus, to meet the requirements of modern empirical research on democracy, we need new instruments. In the intended workshop, we would like to discuss how survey-based indicators could constitute a promising avenue to ‘bring the people back in’ to the measurement of democracy, i.e. to measure the quality of a democracy by means of survey data. Papers that deal with theoretical and/or methodological questions as well as with empirical analyses and outcomes regarding this topic are welcome.

References

Altman, David, and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán. 2002. Assessing the Quality of Democracy: Freedom, Competitiveness and Participation in Eighteen Latin American Countries. Democratization 9 (2):85-100.
Berg-Schlosser, Dirk. 2004. The Quality of Democracies in Europe as Measured by Current Indicators of democratization and Good Governance Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 20 (1):28-55.
Diamond, Larry, and Leonardo Morlino. 2004. The Quality of Democracy. An Overview. Journal of Democracy 15 (4):14-25.
Gastil, Raymond Duncan (1990). The Comparative Survey of Freedom. Experiences and Suggestions. Studies on Comparative International Development 25: 25-50.
Jaggers, Keith und Ted R. Gurr (1995). Transition to Democracy. Tracking the Third Wave with Polity III Indicators of Democracy and Autocracy. Journal of Peace Research 32(4): 469-482.
Lauth, Hans-Joachim (2004). Demokratie und Demokratiemessung. Wiesbaden.
Morlino, Leonardo. 2004. What is a 'Good’ Democracy? Democratization 11 (5):10-32.
Munck, Gerardo und Jay Verkuilen (2002). Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy. Evaluating Alternative Indices. Comparative Political Studies 35(1): 5-34.
Pickel, Susanne and Gert Pickel (2006). Politische Kultur- und Demokratieforschung. Grundbegriffe, Theorien, Methoden. Wiesbaden: VS.
Plattner, Marc F. 2004. The Quality of Democracy. A Skeptical Afterword. Journal of Democracy 15 (4):106-110.
Puddington, Arch und Aili Piano (2005). The 2004 Freedom House Survey: Worrisome Signs, Modest Shifts. Journal of Democracy 16(1): 103-108.
Vanhanen, Tatu (1990). The Process of Democratization. A Comparative Study of 147 States, 1980-88. New York.
Vanhanen, Tatu (2003). Democratization. A Comparative Analysis of 170 Countries. London, New York.