Democracy: from degree to type.

Two indexes

Pietro BesozziJacopo Gandin

Freedom House I

FH is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization, that provides, from 1972, an annual evaluation of the state of freedom in the world.

FH measures the level of freedom in 193 states by using two broad categories: political rights (PR) and civil liberties (CL).

Political Rights (PR)

Political rights enable people to participate freely in the political process, including the right to vote freely for distinct alternatives in legitimate elections, compete for public office, join political parties and organizations, and elect representatives who have a decisive impact on public policies and are accountable to the electorate.

Civil liberties (CL)

Civil liberties are rights in freedom that protect an individual from the government of the nation in which he resides.Civil liberties include freedoms of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and personal autonomy without interference from the state.

How FH measures freedom?

FH checklist contains 10 questions about PR, grouped under three headings:

electoral process, political pluralism and partecipation, functioning of government

and 15 questions about CL grouped under four headings:

freedom of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, personal autonomy and individual rights.

How FH measures freedom? IIFor each of the 25 questions, a country can receive from 0 to 4 points. The points are added up for PR and CL separately and then translated, in steps of 5 for PR and in 6 for CL, into a score, where 1 is the best and 7 is the worst.In the final step, scores are combined and averaged and then converted into a classification of the country as• FREE (F) = (1 - 2,5)• PARTLY FREE (PF) = (3 - 5)• NOT FREE (NF) = (5.5 - 7)

Edition * 2006 2007 2008 2009Year(s) covered 2005 2006 2007 2008

PR CL Status PR CL Status PR CL Status PR CL Status

Afghanistan 5 5 PF 5 5 PF 5 5 PF 5 6 NFAlbania 3 3 PF 3 3 PF 3 3 PF 3 3 PFAlgeria 6 5 NF 6 5 NF 6 5 NF 6 5 NFAndorra 1 1 F 1 1 F 1 1 F 1 1 FAngola 6 5 NF 6 5 NF 6 5 NF 6 5 NFAntigua & Barbuda 2 2 F 2 2 F 2 2 F 2 2 FArgentina 2 2 F 2 2 F 2 2 F 2 2 FArmenia 5 4 PF 5 4 PF 5 4 PF 6 4 PFAustralia 1 1 F 1 1 F 1 1 F 1 1 FAustria 1 1 F 1 1 F 1 1 F 1 1 FAzerbaijan 6 5 NF 6 5 NF 6 5 NF 6 5 NFBahamas 1 1 F 1 1 F 1 1 F 1 1 FBahrain 5 5 PF 5 5 PF 5 5 PF 5 5 PFBangladesh 4 4 PF 4 4 PF 5 4 PF 4 4 PFBarbados 1 1 F 1 1 F 1 1 F 1 1 FBelarus 7 6 NF 7 6 NF 7 6 NF 7 6 NFBelgium 1 1 F 1 1 F 1 1 F 1 1 FBelize 1 2 F 1 2 F 1 2 F 1 2 FBenin 2 2 F 2 2 F 2 2 F 2 2 FBhutan 6 5 NF 6 5 NF 6 5 NF 4 5 PFBolivia 3 3 PF 3 3 PF 3 3 PF 3 3 PFBosnia-Herzegovina 4 3 PF 3 3 PF 4 3 PF 4 3 PFBotswana 2 2 F 2 2 F 2 2 F 2 2 FBrazil 2 2 F 2 2 F 2 2 F 2 2 F

Polity

The polity project codes all those country which were indipendent in 2002 with a population greater then 500.000. It has a democracy and an autocracy score

Its data are broadly used in order to face research projects about democracy, peace and stability across countries.

Democracy score

Each country has a level of democracy score that goes from 0 to 10 based on scores for:

the competitiveness for the recruitment (2 points)

openess of executive recruitment (2 points) constraints on chief executive (4 points) competitiveness of political partecipation (3

points)

Autocracy score

The same system is valid also for the autocracy score that goes from 0 to 10. Like the democracy, also the autocracy is based on the same criteria plus regulation of political partecipation. The more one country is autocratic, the more points it obtains.

Polity's Classification

The Polity conceptual scheme examines concomitant qualities of democratic and autocratic authority in governing institutions. The final classification, using the combined scores, is divided into 3 main categories:

democracies between +7 and +10 inchoerent policies between -6 and +6 and autocracies between -7 and -10

An example: Spain

Freedom House I

• Freedom House is an index pointing out freedom, not democracy.

• Anyway, in 1997 it was introduced a definition of electoral democracies.

• In order to belong to this category, a state must have satisfied four criteria:1. A competitive multiparty political system2. Universal adult suffrage for all citizens3. Contested elections- secret and secure ballot- no massive

voter fraud- representative results4. Access of major political parties to the electorate.

Freedom House II• Since 2007 the index had pointed out some

requirements for a state to be classified as an electoral democracy: it must report a score of at least 7 points out of 12 on the following three questions:1. Is the head of government or other chief national

authority elected through free and fair elections?2. Are the national legislative representatives elected

through free and fair elections?3. Are the electoral laws and framework fair?

• In some cases it can happen that a state satisfies all the requirements, but fails to fit with the four criteria.

Freedom House III

• This phenomenon was defined by Goertz (2006) “concept- measure inconsistency”.

• In this unlikely cases points are adjusted in order to match the designation preferred by Freedom House.

• Anyway, when these situations occur, it is considered better if a case satisfies the four definition criteria rather than the three questions.

Freedom House IV• Freedom House data are often used by scholars to

provide a classification of regime types. Eighteen different classification have been made up.

• These classifications follow two distinct criteria: 1) translating PR scores into a dichotomy of regime types 2) summing or averaging the combined PR and CL scores.

• The thresholds for a regime to be considered democratic are: 2 points according to 1) and 5.5 according to 2).

Polity I

• From Polity index don’t emerge necessary conditions for democracy, that on the contrary is considered a variable.

• Doorenspleet (2000, 2005) pointed out a sort of “minimum conditions” of democracy, referred to each Polity criterion that must be satisfied.

• In this way the types of regime don’t come from the translation into type of a certain degree, but from a systematic qualitative evaluation of indicators.

• The absence of voting rights evaluation criteria pushed Doorenspleet to introduce a measure of inclusiveness.

Polity II

• Scholars read Polity data in a slighter way than Freedom House ones. They built up sixteen interpretation types, both taking into account just democracy scores and building up a combined scale.

• Some scholars fixed the threshold to democracy at six, other at seven.

• More in general, people using Polity data take the score representing difference between democracy and autocracy level.

Polity III

• In case of using the combined index, the threshold for a country to be considered democratic is very slack, going from minus two to plus seven.

• According to these classifications, any importance is given to the level zero as a wathershed between fair and unfair electoral regimes.

• In any case, there are many differences on the parameters about democratic level, according to the purpose the scholar would achieve.

Measures of democratization in Africa I

• The paper provides an empirical example of how much a different interpretation of indexes could affect the research outcomes.

• It is drawn from the work by Schlosser (2008) that divided regime types in three different groups: 1. Polyarchies2. Praetorian regimes (with the presence of civil wars)3. Authoritarian regimes

Measures of democratization in Africa II

• To find out this classification, Schlosser created a combination among some indexes’ outcomes:1. Freedom House PR and CL scores2. Vanhanen’s democracy index3. World Bank indicator for voice and accountability4. Polity’ s democracy score5. Indicator of gross human rights violations from

the Political Terror Scale

Measures of democratization in Africa III

• In order to explain every regime, Schlosser shown the correlation between democracy scores and six variables, then reduced to two in order to underline the differences between polyarchies and other regime types.

• These variables are:1. Percentage of population employed in agriculture (1999)2. Losers accepting results from the polls

• The correlation is looked with relation to three different indexes: FH Political Rights score, FH combined score and Polity score. A different threshold to democracy is taken for every index.

Different Outcomes I

Different Outcomes II

Different Outcomes III

Conclusions

• We have tried to present the main indexes for measuring the quality of democracies: Freedom House and Polity, showing the variables taken into account to build up these indexes

• Afterwards, we have shown how different ways of using indexes, related with different interpretations of scores, can lead to unconsistent research outcomes.