Measuring Democracy

Zanger’s piece focuses on the relationship between democracy and repression: more specifically, he looks at how regime change affects life integrity violations.

I found the author’s conception and definition of these “life integrity violations” to be a bit perplexing. He says that he intends to use the terms “repression, state terrorism, and life integrity interchangeably”. I don’t think they should be: it seems state terrorism is a but of a different monster than repression in general. He does outline a few past definitions of the term, but I think the issues of terrorism since 2001 (after Zanger wrote this piece) may change his mind on using the term.

Zanger does use Polity scores to in his analysis. This is the measure of democracy I found to be most useful in my work with the Balkans. His points out the fact that Polity focuses on institutional characteristics, something I also found to be useful in my report.

I always like these type of articles that make an argument that seems like common sense and backs it up with empirical evidence. For example, I can’t say I am too surprised to see that during changes toward democracy, human rights abuses decrease. But to see it through statistical analysis makes it even more concrete. Pair this with Zanger’s theory, which is sound and well articulated, and I found there to be few holes in the piece overall.