Democracy And Dictatorship: Conceptualization And

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Democracy and Dictatorship:Conceptualization and Measurement

We live in a world that generally agrees on the importance anddesirability of democracy.But it hasn’t always been like that.

The ancient Greeks were some of the first to start thinking aboutthe merits of different forms of regime.

Demokratia is the Greek word meaning ‘rule by the demos.’Although the Greek word demos often gets translated as ‘thepeople,’ it refers more specifically to the ‘common people’ – thosepeople with little or no economic independence who are politicallyuneducated.Many believed that the demos would pursue their own interests atthe expense of the commonweal.

Plato did not see democracy as government by the people.Instead, he saw it as government by the poor and uneducatedagainst the rich and educated.Plato believed that political decisions should be based on expertiseand that allowing all people to rule would lead to mob rule andclass warfare.

citizens govern for themselves rather than the commonweal. Some of the same fears aboutdemocracy—that it would result in class warfare, attempts by the poor to expropriate therich, and so forth—were just as strong in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whenTable 5.1Number of rulersAristotle’s Classification of RegimesGood form“For the Good of All”Bad form“For the Good of the ManyPoliteiaDemocracyAristotle saw democracy as the most dangerous of the corruptforms of regime. Democracy was class rule by the worst class.

Democracy was not associated with elections. Until the 18th century, democracy was seen as a regime inwhich offices were distributed by lot.

Democracy was viewed as obsolete. Democracy meant direct legislation, not representativegovernment.

Monarchy was consistently preferred to democracy by politicalthinkers.

Things began to change in the Age of Revolution (1775-1848).People had talked about representative government, notdemocracy.But ‘democracy’ and ‘aristocracy’ came to designate the main linesof cleavage in the Age of Revolution.

The classical 3-way distinction between the one, the few, and themany was gradually replaced by the 2-way distinction betweendemocracy and autocracy.

Research Questions Why are some countries democracies and others dictatorship? Do democracies or dictatorships produce better economicperformance? What factors influence democratic survival?All of these questions require that we be able to classify countriesas democratic or dictatorial.

Theories about the world are based on abstract concepts.A concept is a mental category or construct that captures themeaning of objects, events, or ideas.Theoretical concepts cannot be observed; they exist only in ourheads.

When we want to test our theoretical claims, we have to translateour concepts into concrete measures or indicators that we canactually observe.A measure or indicator is a quantification of the thing we areinterested in.The process by which we translate a concept into a measure iscalled operationalization – we use a particular measure tooperationalize a theoretical concept.

Democracy is an abstract theoretical concept.What is your concept of democracy?How should we operationalize it?

The central notion underlying our contemporary concept ofdemocracy is that the ‘people’ rather than some subset of thepeople should rule.But how should we translate this abstract concept into a practicalset of criteria for classifying political regimes?

A substantive view of democracy classifies political regimes inregard to the outcomes that they produce.A minimalist or procedural view of democracy classifies politicalregimes in regard to their institutions and procedures.

Robert Dahl proposed a minimalist view of democracy.Two dimensions1. Contestation captures the extent to which citizens are free toorganize themselves into competing blocs in order to press forthe policies a dimension is equivalent to moving from a 3 to a 4 on another?

Once you have aggregated your attributes, you have decide theappropriate measurement levelA nominal measure classifies observations into discrete categoriesthat must be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.An ordinal measure rank-orders observations along some dimension.An interval measure places observations on a scale so that we cantell how much more or less of the thing being measured eachobservation exhibits.

Reliability refers to the extent to which the measurement processrepeatedly and consistently produces the same score for a givencase.The reliability of a measure is likely to depend on the extent towhich the measure is based on observables rather subjectivejudgements.

5: Democracy and DictatorshipFigure 5.3Comparing the Reliability and Validity of ThreeMeasuresReliable, but Not ValidValid, but Not ReliableValid and Reliablevalid in the sense that on “average” it captures the underlying concept, but unreliable inthe sense that there might be a big difference in any two attempts to measure the phenomenon (Figure 5.3 center panel). Obviously, we would like our measures to be both valid and

Replicability refers to the ability of third-party scholars toreproduce the process through which a measure is created.Replicability is important because it allows researchers that are notparty to the construction of a particular measure to independentlyevaluate the reliability and validity of that measure.At a minimum, replicability requires that scholars provide clearcoding rules and make their disaggregated data available.

2016). Polity IV provides an annual measure of democracy and autocracy for 167 countries from 1800 to 2015. The Democracy and Autocracy scores for each country both range from 0 to 10. From these two measures, a Polity Score is constructed for each country. The Polity Score is calculated as the Democracy Score minus the Autocracy Score.

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