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I was being very naive thinking that the problem between a dichotomous and gradated visions of democracy was “solved”. By reading ACLP (Alvarez, Cheibub, Limongi, and Preworksi) and Reich I remembered how convincing both sides can be. I felt like a customer having to choose between two very-well advertised products.

ACLP are clearly in favor of a dichotomous measure of democracy, even if does not prevent them afterwards to qualify in more details both democracies and authoritarian regimes. According to them, “one cannot be half-democratic: there is a natural zero point” (21). Their main argument is that “unless offices are contested, they should bot be considered democratic” (21). Furthermore, they argue that intermediate categories exist only because the measurements are not good enough. It is their choice to have a system that generates “larger errors but fewer of them”(22).

In my opinion, the error of saying that a country is democratic when it is not and vice versa is pretty problematic!

On the opposite side of the spectrum we have Reich, who is clearly against a dichotomous measure of democracy. He argues that such a measure is not appropriate, even more in ‘third wave’ transitions, where “semi-democracies have been a common outcome of regime change” (2). Therefore he argues in favor of the ‘Political Regime Change dataset’ (PRC) that includes the category of semi-democracy.

Reich compares the PRC and the ACLP and concludes that only 25% of the transitions from democracy to autocracy are coded identically in both dataset. This is a powerful sign that clarifications need to be made. Again I think that labeling a country as an autocracy when it is not completely one and as a democracy when it is not fully one is a major problem because it weakens the meanings of those two concepts.

Having studied Latin America last term I would be in favor of Reich because not only most Latin American countries often fall into the semi-democratic category :

“A regime in which a substantial degree of political competition and freedom exist, but where the effective power of elected officials is so limited, or political party competition is so restricted, or the freedom and fairness of elections are so compromised that electoral outcomes, while competitive, still deviate significantly from popular preferences; and/or civil and political liberties are so limited that some political orientations and interests are unable to organize and express themselves.” (7)

But also because he emphasizes the necessity of going beyond elections as indicators of regime type, which I continue to think is essential.

However, I admit that there is a point made by ACLP that I need to think further and it is the assertion that having a minimalist definition of democracy allows to “examine empirically, rather than decide by definition, whether the repeated holding of contested elections is associated with other features at times attributed to democracy: social and economic equality, control by citizens overs politicians, effective exercise of political rights, widespread participation, or freedom from arbitrary violence”(20).

Does a broader definition of democracy prevent to examine empirically those causal relations? I guess if we have a transparent and precise data set we can still examine those correlations even if they are seen as being necessary ones to label a country as a democracy. But I have to think about it more… tell me what you think!

Tunisia, Egypt, and now Yemen. Is democracy contagious?

Victoria Clark examines “Why Yemen won’t fall” in an opinion-piece of the New York Times.

It is very interesting to see how what happens in neighbor countries can change the perception of what becomes possible for the people. Even more with the spread of information today, one country can  change “the rules of the game” for a whole region. In Yemen the president ended up making  political concessions that he would never have made without the events in Egypt and Tunisia.

However, it would be interesting to see in the long term what those different “revolutions” become. Depending on how the negotiations are made between the different groups, and what will be the role of the military, the spectrum of possibilities for political regimes will be very broad. Therefore I would say that revolution might be contagious but we cannot say yet if democracy will be too.

While Herrera and Kapur insist on how to improve the quality of the data by acknowledging biases, Adcock and Collier focus on measurement validity.

Both articles are very useful in order to improve the quality of measures and they both give advices on how to deal with the imperfection of different methods.

After debating about the definition of democracy I found very useful the distinction made by Adcock and Collier between validity and validation. They encourage the scholars to distinguish between the conceptual concern and the concern about measurement. First, is the definition of  democracy we chose to create the indicator (the systematized concept) coherent with the broader concept of democracy (the background concept)? Second, is the indicator accurately measuring what we defined as democracy for the purpose of that research?

In the jungle of  definitions this distinction allows the scholar to locate more precisely where the problem is and therefore make it easier for them to solve it. Furthermore, they explain in a (not always) clear purpose the different ways of evaluating the quality of the measures. Those types are intertwined and constituted a unified conception of measurement validity.

(1) The Content Validation, which is what we usually learn as being “validity”: is the indicator actually measuring what we want?

(2) Convergent/Discriminant Validation:  Are other similar indicators giving the same results? Does our indicator give different results if we measure something different?

(3) Nomological/ Construct Validation: Once we have a measure, if we take already existing valid hypothesis, do they confirm our own results?

As in the rest of the article they always assess the problems, limits and concerns around the different methods.

Finally, one issue I was skeptic about when reading their previous article (pragmatic approach) was when they advised to “compare regimes according to whether they have achieved full democratization in relation to the norms of the relevant time period” (552). However, after reading this article and seeing more concretely how this can be done through the tools named “context-specific domains of observation”, “context -specific indicators” and “adjusted common indicators” I am more convinced by this possibility.  Moreover, because they acknowledge the dangers of doing so and advise to carefully justify it. In a world where we want to compare democracies I think that it is very important to find a good balance between being conscious about the limits of comparisons and completely avoiding to do some. Because comparisons are the roots for more general laws we need them and their article is a good start to surpass the “recurring tension between particularizing and universalizing”(534).

In my last blog about democracy in the news I discussed the issue of public funding for political parties. Apparently, in the “democracy barometer”, which assesses 30 countries from 1995 to 2005, “no party financing rules” is considered as hindering the level of democracy. This criteria, added to the lack of freedom of information are responsible for a relatively bad ranking position for Switzerland.

Furthermore even if Switzerland is a direct democracy with a lot of different means to participate, this study confirms the already existing idea that a serious bias causes a lack of political representation.

“The most interesting is the participation function because we have so many opportunities for participation but there is a bias – it’s rather educated people with high income, men rather than women, older people rather than younger people,” Bühlmann explained.

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/Swiss_not_as_democratic_as_they_think.html?cid=29353166

I found the article very interesting as it describes the result of this new index of democracy. Here is the link to the barometer :http://www.democracybarometer.org/baroapp/public/static/index?lang=en

It is very relevant for the discussion we were having this week about what a good definition is. In the methodology section of the barometer’s website, the authors explain that “the aim of the Democracy Barometer is not to define whether a country is a democracy or not but to compare the quality of different established democracies”. Therefore their measure is more about the quality of democracy than about the minimal conditions for democracy but it is still very interesting to see what makes a “good” democracy in their opinion. The main indicators are : Freedom, Control and Equality, each of them divided in components and subcomponents to reach a total of 100 indicators!

I invite you to go and check the website so that maybe we can later discuss about it! I think that the course in the following weeks will give us the tools to understand it better!

I really enjoyed reading Collier and Adcock because their article is very structured, well-argued and most of all it finally enters into the realm of what we are concretely going to do with a definition of democracy. Not that I don’t like theoretical debates but , as underlined by the authors, “how scholars understand and operationalize a concept can and should depend in part on what they are going to do with it”( 537). Therefore I really liked their idea of seeing the definition of democracy, not only as a pleasurable philosophical struggle between ideas and academic’s egos, but also as a tool to test causal relationships.

In their article, Collier and Adcock assess the definitions of different authors to see  the underlying justifications for their choice between dichotomous and gradated definitions. Then, they criticize those justifications by clearly balancing advantages and disadvantages, arriving to the conclusion that it is often arguable to use both dichotomous and gradated definitions depending on the aim of the research. Moreover, they emphasize the importance of limiting the study of democracy in a certain time and space to avoid incomparable comparisons. Justifications must be as specific as possible and built into the framing of the research question.

Near the end of the article they develop the idea of bounded wholes, which I found very interesting. Starting from Sartori’s definition of a bounded whole : ” a system constituted by multiple attributes, all of which must presumably be present for a case to be classified as an instance of the concept” (543), they focus on the conceptual interaction among the defining attributes of democracy.

It is very interesting to see that for example, the absence of civil liberties cancels the interpretation of the other attributes as being democratic, whereas decree powers do not. Therefore, defining attribute do not all have the same importance in a definition. Some are crucial and some are less crucial. This conclusion however, is not a real one, as it brings us back to the starting point : what are the minimal fundamental components of democracy?!

Finally, the only critic that I could easily see arising against their pragmatic approach is the threat of being to relativist because nothing is ever wrong depending on what we are looking for and how we justify it. For example, when they discuss a solution to compare transitions to democracy with a dichotomous classification, their advice is to “compare regimes according to whether they have achieved full democratization in relation to the norms of the relevant time period” (552). What will the result of this be? Democratic under certain conditions of space and time? Is this not a gradation of democracy at the end?

However, I could use their own argument to take their defense. Finding a coherent and theoretical definition of democracy was not the aim of their article. Pragmatism was and I think they achieved it by giving us the tools to choose between dichotomous and gradated definitions. The truth of a definition for them, can be evaluated after the measure not before. It’s true if it works.

I do not know a lot about Canadian politics but when I read this article I thought that your Prime minister seriously threatens the democratic system by willing to eliminate the public funding of political parties. (I do not say Switzerland is better because there is actually no public funding and it is becoming a real issue too)

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/924883–dollars-and-democracy

In a world where the media has such a big importance and the campaigns can influence the results of the vote I think that each party should have the same amount of money to campaign for an election. The whole problems lies in the fact that it is very hard to control the funding anyway because it can be very indirect. Can we measure the value of a celebrity endorsing a political candidate? Can we prevent influential corporations or famous brands to express their political views? Certainly not, or at least it could be argued that it is a breach of their freedom of expression. That is what the article aptly points out. However, even though it is hard to limit the external funding I still think that there should be a minimum provided by the state in order to ensure that each party is able to compete. As mentioned by Dahl, Schmitter and Karl, it is necessary for each citizen to be able to pick his/her preference but if some political parties do not have enough funding they won’t be able to compete. Therefore it is essential for an equal political representation of the preferences of the citizens to have a public funding of the political parties. The argument that the suppression of this funding will save money is not valid because it will reduce the choice available to the citizens, therefore the money will be saved not in favor of the community but in favor of some citizens and  at the expense of others.