Freedom house Matteo Demontis Comparative Politics, Marco Giuliani 07/05/2012

Conceptualization Freedom Political Rights Civil Liberties

Rating Process Political Rights ( questions) 1. Electoral Process (3) 2. Political Pluralism and Participation (4) 3. Functioning of Government (3) 4. Discretionary Questions (2)

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)

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

Aggregation Political Rights (PR)Civil Liberties (CL) Total scoresRatingTotal scoresRating *70-77

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

Links Results 2012: Checklist Questions: /checklist-questions-and-guidelines Methodology: /methodology

Critiques Maximalist definition No clear coding rule No disaggregate data Internal coherence

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 Annual coding for 164 states over the years Main index: examines concomitant qualities of democratic and autocratic authority:  Executive recruitment  Constraints on executive authority  Political competition Francesca Casarico

Operational indicators Democracy Autocracy

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

Country-year format State “continuity and change”

Polity-case format Regime “persistence and change”

Critiques Too minimal definition Inappropriate aggregation procedure Conceptual logic: problem of redundancy

INDEX OF EFFECTIVE DEMOCRACY (Welzel & Inglehart) Gaia Lovisolo

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.

● 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

PROCESS Socioeconomic development Self-expression values Democratic institutions and liberal democracy

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.

Figure 7-1 Self-expression values and formal democracy.

Figure 7-2. Self-expression values and Effective Democracy

Possible critique? Direction of causality

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index Comparative Positive, Marco Giuliani 07/05/2012 Angelica Puricelli

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.

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.

Type of regimeCountries % of countries % of world population Full democracies Flawed democracies Hybrid regimes Authoritarian regimes Democracy index by regime type

RankRegion Northern America Western Europe Latin america & the Caribbean Asia & Australasia Central & Eastern Europe Sub- Saharan Africa Middle East & North Africa Total Democracy index average by region

Critiques Bias Turnout and the predominance of legislative

“DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT: POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS AND MATERIAL WELL-BEING IN THE WORLD, “ IMPACT OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Giulia Frenquellucci ACPL database model (Alvarez, Cheibub, Przeworski, Limongi)

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 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 ). [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

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 don’t hold

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).

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.

V ANHANEN ’ S INDEX OF DEMOCRACY Marija Zalimaite

Tatu Vanhanen – emeritus professor at University of Tampere and the University of Helsinki The index covers 187 countries from 1810 to 2000

7 VARIABLES Vanhanen’s country number Year Competition Participation Index of democracy State name abbreviation from the Correlates of War project (COW) COW country number

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

P ARTICIPATION The % of population which actually voted in the same elections Calculated from total population

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

Italy : Competition – 65.2; Participation – 65.56; ID – USA : Comp – 51.3; Part – 37.19; ID – UK : Comp – 56.8; Part – 53.7; ID – 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

Polyarchy and Contestation scales by Coppedge & Reinicke

SPSS file

Variables Polyarchy scale Contestation scale The Contestation scale is a less precise but more reliable version of the Polyarchy scale.

Contestation scale Fairness of elections Freedom of organization Freedom of expression Media pluralism

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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