Measuring Democracy

Being a political science major deeply interested in the study of democracy, I have read a ton of articles on how to properly define the term. I realize the importance of coming to some sort of definition, but I must admit, it can get pretty tedious.

Schmitter and Karl, however, take a really interesting, intuitive approach to defining the term. First and foremost, they are realistic, as they don’t try to make democracy something that it is not. The step by step process by which they submit their definition and then break it down by “procedures” and “principles” is quite convincing.

The emphasis on competition stuck out to me, as in the first few days of class, my definition of democracy included elections. But as the authors submit, elections are not “it”. There needs to be a variety of other avenues for the citizenry to access and influence the political process.

Finally, the section on “What Democracy is Not” made me feel like the authors weren’t just ideological quacks. They realize the possibility that other forms of government can do certain things better (potentially). This brought me back to a thought that a talk show host, Dan Carlin, brought up years back. I forget what he was referencing, but the basic idea was that a scientist (Watson, the human genome guy) had come out with some research suggesting something completely different and backwards to what we all thought was fact, a given. Carlin, passionate about democracy and its capabilities, asked the question: what if it was proven that democracy was not the best way to govern a people? What if there is a proven better way to run society?

Living in the Western world, I feel like we are all brought up to hold democracy as the be all end all. What if that belief was challenged? Here, the authors do allow themselves to see the other side: that democracy is not the end game. And I think that is really important, as it gives you a proper perspective to study and assess the development of democracy around the world.