Kate's Blog

For our first paper I’ve chosen the region of Post-Soviet Europe. Since we’re writing a report spanning from 1985 to present that encompasses the decline and eventual fall of the Soviet Union from the 80’s to the 90’s, I think examining this region will allow me to focus on the transition from communism to the emergence of a democracy. Also, I’ve always been interested in all things Europe.

I’m sure that many restaurant goers have visited a dine-out review website at least once before going to a new place. For Vancouverites, two of the more popular restaurant review websites are Dinehere and Urbanspoon so I wanted to compare how each site awards a given restaurant its respective score.

Urbanspoon.com uses a dichotomous scale where voters can say they either like a restaurant or not. The site then provides the reader with a percentage of the voters who have “liked” a the restaurant. Dinehere.ca on the other hand provides a much more comprehensive review. Each restaurant is given an overall score out of 5 stars. However this score is comprised of 4 subscales that are also 5 stars each, though they each measure a separate aspect: food, service, value and ambiance. Furthermore, the website allows you to view every individual person’s full review.

Here are reviews from both sites for 5 restaurants:

The Foundation – DH: 3/5, US: 78%
The Eatery – DH: 3/5 , US: 73%
Stepho’s Greek Taverna – DH: 3/5, US: 77%
Pho Central – DH: 3/5, US: 91%
The Fringe Café – DH: 3.5/5, US: 57%

The dichotomous nature of Urbanspoon gives us a continuous range of scores but these scores are based on only one criteria making it difficult to know what the measurement is based on. However, Dinehere allows you to get a more complete idea of why the restaurant is rated the way it is and allows for a higher degree of differentiation.

“So what is democracy, anyway?”

I guess the easy way out would be to open a dictionary and look it up but unfortunately “democracy” is not just a 4 syllable noun derived from the Greek work demokratia meaning -dēmos ‘the people’ + -kratia ‘power, rule.’ Democracy is not a word that resonates the same meaning whenever and wherever it is said because it is an abstract idea that has taken many forms over the years.

Political scientists have been trying to standardize ‘democracy’ for a long time. However, this has in reality created various ideas and ideals. Schumpeter strives for a minimalist definition of democracy based on free elections. Dahl creates an idealistic concept of democracy that includes 8 variables that must be met (all the while accepting that this definition is unattainable). Sartori proposes a ladder of generality having forms of democracy move up or down from the root meaning and there is also the idea of diminished subtypes that refer to what is missing from a regime being fully democratic. Finally, there’s either the question of whether democracy conceptualization should be dichotomous or graded?

My definition of democracy is somewhere between Schumpeter and Dahl. I think that there should be an attainable target of a few variables (fair elections, suffrage and protection of civil liberties) that defines countries that are democracies from ones that are not. These regimes labeled “democracies” can then be graded based on how democratic they are. This flexibility of describing democracies based on how democratic they are (opposed to yes or no), allows for changes to be observed while the democracy develops or deteriorates.

An article titled “Attack ads hurt democracy” on thestar.com has Green party leader Elizabeth May urging other

“party leaders not to further suppress the voter turnout by resorting to mean-spirited ads that do not deal with policies and priorities but rather personalities”.

May argues that political attack ads like the ones used by the Conservatives to question the patriotism of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff are contributing to lower voter turnout as it paints a negative picture of politics. May also suggests that the vicious ads are a cynical strategy used by parties aiming for a lower voter turnout that could potentially be especially beneficial for the Conservatives.

Although the article only briefly refers to the subject of democracy when May is quoted saying that the cynicism of the party machines “is devaluing the whole business of democracy at a very fundamental level”, it does resonate a feeling of apprehensiveness with the talk of a spring election. Have voters been swayed since the emergence of the attack-style campaigning to not only vote for the party being attacked but to not vote at all?

Polling done after the 2008 elections suggest that 11% of respondents did not vote for any candidate due to the Conservative campaign ads attacking Liberal leader Stéphane Dion. More Canadians are becoming reluctant to go to the polls suggesting that attack ads lower voter turnout and ultimately lower voter participation in the democratic process. An ethical overhaul of campaigning strategies is needed to promote a more democratic process in Canada.

Scholars have been engaged in a debate over the choice between using dichotomies or a degree-based approach to define democracy. Many attempt to identify their choice as the “best” but they often fail to justify why that is. In light of many generic justifications by numerous scholars, Collier & Adcock attempt a pragmatic strategy. They maintain that choices between dichotomous or graded approaches to concept formation should be based on the “theoretical framework, analytic goals, and context of research involved in a particular study” (p. 539).

Despite the fact that at some points I felt that Collier & Adcock were leaning towards the justification of dichotomies, they effectively challenged the flaws of general justifications introduced by other scholars. I enjoyed “Democracy and Dichotomies: A Pragmatic Approach to Choices about Concepts” because the authors did not attempt to answer if it’s better to classify or rank but rather acknowledged that the methodological choice of either was dependant on the conditions mentioned above. Collier & Adcock argue that as these change and evolve, conceptualizations of democracy could as well. They argue that achieving sharper differentiation is necessary for conceptualization of democracy and that this can be done with the least room for error by combining a graded approach with dichotomous categories.

I particularly liked the section on “Normative Evaluation” in which Collier & Adcock touched on Dahl’s evaluation of regimes on a graded scale. They take into consideration his arguments on the “dynamics of change, and particularly the direction and rate of change” (p. 557) and argue that his flexible approach is not embedded in a certain historical period. I find this important because it relates back to the purpose of choosing dichotomies vs. gradations. It seems almost arbitrary to promote one approach over the other when the research has different purposes.