Measuring Democracy

Often one finds that people argue their solution is more democratic; how does one know? Some political scientists have looked at measuring democracyness, here’s what I have found.

1. Democracy continues its disturbing retreat, the Economist in 2018
2. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s index of democracy by y Laza Kekic dated 2007
3. CONCEPTUALIZING AND MEASURING DEMOCRACY Evaluating Alternative Indices, by MUNCK & VERKUILEN, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; see also hosted at sagepub.com
4. Wikipedia on the Polity IV data series, with a 5 point scale and ranking.
5. Democracy by Max Roser, a chart based essay on its footprint on the world
6. I was pointed at the U. of Zurich’s democracy barometer.

In previous work, particularly, in commenting on the political discourse following Fidel Castro’s death, I have used the World Bank Governance Index. Actually I didn’t coz it didn’t say what I wanted. Ptui. 😊