Freedom house Matteo Demontis Comparative Politics, Marco
Giuliani 07/05/2012
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Conceptualization Freedom Political Rights Civil Liberties
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Rating Process Political Rights (10 + 2 questions) 1. Electoral
Process (3) 2. Political Pluralism and Participation (4) 3.
Functioning of Government (3) 4. Discretionary Questions (2)
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Rating Process Civil Liberties (15 questions) 1. Freedom of
Expression and Belief (4) 2. Associational and Organizational
Rights (3) 3. Rule of Law (4) 4. Personal Autonomy and Individual
Rights (4)
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Scoring Degree of Adherence to International Human Rights
Standards: 0 No good practices 1 Few good practices OR Some good
practices, but no good laws 2 Some good practices OR Many good
practices, but few good laws 3 Many good practices OR Most/all good
practices, and some good laws 4 Most/all good practices and
corresponding good laws
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Aggregation Political Rights (PR)Civil Liberties (CL) Total
scoresRatingTotal scoresRating 36-40153-601 30-35244-522
24-29335-433 18-23426-344 12-17517-255 6-1168-166 0-5 *70-77
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Aggregation Combined Average of the PR and CL RatingsCountry
Status 1.0 to 2.5Free 3.0 to 5.0Partly Free 5.5 to 7.0Not Free
Critiques Maximalist definition No clear coding rule No
disaggregate data Internal coherence
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Aim: coding the authority characteristics of states in the
world system for purposes of comparative, quantitative analysis
Unit of analysis: polity: political or governmental organization; a
society or institution with an organized government; state; body
politic States with total population greater than 500.000 Annual
coding for 164 states over the years 1800-2010 Main index: examines
concomitant qualities of democratic and autocratic authority:
Executive recruitment Constraints on executive authority Political
competition Francesca Casarico
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Operational indicators Democracy Autocracy
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The Polity score Computed by subtracting the authocracy score
from the democracy score 21 point scale ranging from -10
(hereditary monarchy) to +10 (consolidated democracy) Spectrum that
spans from fully istitutionalized authocracies through mixed, or
inchoerent, authority regimes to fully institutionalized
democracies. autocracies anocracies democracies + standardized
codes: - 66: interruption period - 77: interregnum period - 88:
transition period -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10
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Country-year format State continuity and change
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Polity-case format Regime persistence and change
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Critiques Too minimal definition Inappropriate aggregation
procedure Conceptual logic: problem of redundancy
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INDEX OF EFFECTIVE DEMOCRACY (Welzel & Inglehart) Gaia
Lovisolo
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CREATION OF THE INDEX They start from the Freedom House index
but they create a new index that keeps into consideration not only
the extent to which formal liberties are institutionalized, but
also the extent to which they are actually practiced.
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Effective (liberal) democracy vs Formal (electoral) democracy
To differentiate between the two we look at the elite behavior,
because it determines weather democratic rules are genuinely
applied, or weather democracy exists only in name Self-expression
values Strongly correlated with: Socioeconomic development
Democratic institutions They work together to broaden autonomous
human choice ELEMENTS OF THE INDEX
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PROCESS Socioeconomic development Self-expression values
Democratic institutions and liberal democracy
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Construction of the index Freedom House measure of civil and
political rights x World bank's anticorruption score (indicator of
elite integrity) EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THIS GENUINE
MEASURE OF DEMOCRACY AND SELF- EXPRESSION VALUES, WE FIND A STRONG
CORRELATION OF R=0.90 ACROSS 73 NATIONS.
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Figure 7-1 Self-expression values and formal democracy.
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Figure 7-2. Self-expression values and Effective Democracy
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Possible critique? Direction of causality
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The Economist Intelligence Units Democracy Index Comparative
Positive, Marco Giuliani 07/05/2012 Angelica Puricelli
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The overall index is based on five categories, each rating on a
0 to 10 score, so the overall index is the simple average of them :
1.Electoral process and pluralism 2.Civil liberties 3.Functioning
of government 4.Political participation 5.Political culture Each
category indexes is based on the sum of the 60 indicators score
with a combination of a dichotomous and a three-point scoring
system, then they are converted to a scale of 0 to 10. Adjustments
to the category scores are made if countries do not score a 1 in
the following critical areas for democracy: 1.Whether national
elections are free and fair; 2.The security of voters; 3.The
influence of foreign powers on government; 4.The capability of the
civil service to implement policies.
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Each country can be classified as: Full democracy (score: from
8 to 10) Flawed democracy (score: from 6 to 7.9) Hybrid regime
(score: from 4 to 5.9) Authoritarian regime (below 4) Features of
the index: Use of public opinion surveys (in political
partecipation and in political culture) Participation and voter
turnout are seen as legitimacy of the current system (positive
relation with democracy) The predominance of the legislative
branches over the executive power has a positive correlation with
the measure of the overall democracy.
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Type of regimeCountries % of countries % of world population
Full democracies2515.011.3 Flawed democracies 5331.737.1 Hybrid
regimes3722.214.0 Authoritarian regimes 5231.137.6 Democracy index
by regime type
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RankRegion2006200820102011 1 Northern America 8.64 8.638.59 2
Western Europe 8.608.618.458.40 3 Latin america & the Caribbean
6.376.436.376.35 4 Asia & Australasia 5.445.585.535.51 5
Central & Eastern Europe 5.765.675.555.50 6 Sub- Saharan Africa
4.244.284.234.32 7 Middle East & North Africa 3.533.543.433.62
Total 5.525.555.465.49 Democracy index average by region
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Critiques Bias Turnout and the predominance of legislative
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DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT: POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS AND MATERIAL
WELL-BEING IN THE WORLD, 1950-1990 IMPACT OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Giulia Frenquellucci ACPL database model
(Alvarez, Cheibub, Przeworski, Limongi)
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REG: Dummy variable coded 1 for dictatorships and 0 for
democracies. Transition years are coded as the regime that emerges
in that year. For instance, there was a transition from democracy
to dictatorship in Argentina in 1955. In that year, REG=1 ;
MOBILIZE: Classification of political regimes in which
dictatorships are distinguished by the presence of political
parties. Coded 0 if democracy; 1 if mobilizing dictatorship (with
parties); 2 if exclusionary dictatorship (without parties).
Transition years are coded as the regime that emerges in that year
; ETHNIC: Percentage of population of the largest ETHNIC group,
measured in the year for which data were available (roughly
1976-1985). [The Economist 1988 and Vanhanen 1992]. ; LEGSELEC:
Legislative selection. Coded 0 if no legislature exists (includes
cases in which there is a constituent assembly without ordinary
legislative powers); 1 non-elective legislature (examples include
the selection of legislators by the effective executive, or on the
basis of heredity or ascription); 2 if elective (legislators, or
members of the lower house in a bicameral system, are selected by
means of either direct or indirect popular election). [Banks 1996,
but modified and completed where appropriate]. Variables Examples
135 countries; 4126 observations; 105 variables Empirical
features
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DICHOTOMOUS MEASUREMENT [a measure that has only two discrete
categories of values] Democracy Dictatorship 1.The chief executive
is elected; 2.The legislature is elected; 3.There is more than one
party competing in the election; 4.An alternation in power under
identical electoral rules has taken place; If these dont hold
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The importance of contested elections Two logically independent
claims: Underlying Principles Minimalist definition ( Schumpeterian
) of democracy examine empirically, rather than decide by
definition, whether the repeated holding of contested elections is
associated with other features at times attributed to democracies:
social and economic equality, control by citizens over politicians,
effective exercise of political rights, widespread participation,
freedom from arbitrary violence. A validity claim: democracy is
first a question of kind before it is one of degree (as Sartori
says classify before quantify) A reliability claim: dichotomy
contains less error in measurement than do graded measurements
(like the ones that for example allow the presence of categories
such as semi-democracy).
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Criticisms: Reich et al. Dichotomous measurement appears both
methodologically regressive and lacking in face validity.
Impossible to exclude from the analysis categories like
semi-democracies when these have been a very frequent outcome of
regime change.
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V ANHANEN S INDEX OF DEMOCRACY Marija Zalimaite
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Tatu Vanhanen emeritus professor at University of Tampere and
the University of Helsinki The index covers 187 countries from 1810
to 2000
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7 VARIABLES Vanhanens country number Year Competition
Participation Index of democracy State name abbreviation from the
Correlates of War project (COW) COW country number
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C OMPETITION The smaller parties share of the votes cast in
parliamentary or presidential elections, or both to indicate the
degree of competition Calculated by subtracting the % of votes won
by the largest party from 100
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P ARTICIPATION The % of population which actually voted in the
same elections Calculated from total population
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I NDEX OF D EMOCRACY (ID) Competition and Participation
combined into Index of Democratization Minimum thresholds: 30% of
Competition, 10% of Participation and 5.0 index points for ID
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Italy : Competition 65.2; Participation 65.56; ID 42.75 USA :
Comp 51.3; Part 37.19; ID 19.08 UK : Comp 56.8; Part 53.7; ID 30.15
China : Comp 0; Part 0; ID 0 Egypt : Comp 13.15; Part 22.48; ID
2.96 Belarus : Comp 15; Part 47.97; ID 7.2
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Polyarchy and Contestation scales by Coppedge &
Reinicke
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SPSS file
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Variables Polyarchy scale Contestation scale The Contestation
scale is a less precise but more reliable version of the Polyarchy
scale.
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Contestation scale Fairness of elections Freedom of
organization Freedom of expression Media pluralism
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Heads of the government are elected, no frauds Heads of the
government are elected, frauds occur and are unpunished No
meaningful elections Free and Fair Elections
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Freedom of Organization No restrictions on purely political
organizations that have not previously committed mass murder. Some
political parties that have not committed mass murder are banned,
but membership in some alternatives to official organizations is
permitted. The only relatively independent organizations that are
allowed to exist are nonpolitical. No independent organizations are
allowed
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Freedom of Expression Citizens express their views on all
topics without fear of punishment Dissent is discouraged, whether
by informal pressure or by systematic censorship, but control is
incomplete. All open dissent is forbidden and effectively
suppressed.
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Availability of Alternative Sources of Information Alternative
sources of information exist and are protected by law. Alternative
sources of information are widely available but government versions
are presented in preferential fashion. The government dominates the
diffusion of information, alternative sources exist only for
nonpolitical issues. There is no public alternative to official
information.
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Interpreting the Contestation Scale Scores Information Fair
elections, full freedom for expression and media Fair elections,
full freedom for expression, preferential presentation of official
views in the media Fair elections, full freedom for political
organization, some public dissent is suppressed, preferential
presentation of official views in the media.
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Fair elections, some political organizations are banned, some
public dissent is suppressed, preferential presentation of official
views in the media. Elections are marred by fraud, some political
organizations are banned, some public dissent is suppressed,
preferential presentation of official views in the media. No
meaningful elections, only nonpolitical organizations are allowed
or alternatives to the official media are very limited.
Interpreting the Contestation Scale Scores Information
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No meaningful elections, only nonpolitical organizations are
allowed, some public dissent is suppressed and alternatives to the
official media are very limited. No meaningful elections, all
organizations are banned, all public dissent is suppressed, there
is no public alternative to official information.
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Evaluation Strengths Identification of attributes: fairness
Test of intercoder reliability Sophisticated aggregation procedure
Weaknesses Minimialist definition: omission of participation,
offices and agenda setting Restricted empirical (temporal) scope by
Munck and Verkuilen