Poli 220 Chapter 5

• demokratia

  rule by the demos (common people)
• Tunisian: Examples of state, government and regime

  • Became state when it gained its independence from France
  • Gained territory to use threat of force
  • Government formed when it was led by a president
  • person rule state
  • Had a military dictatorial regime
  • this is describes how the state is organized
• How did the meaning and appeal of democracy change overtime?

  • Originally, regimes should be formed of only elites rather than common peoples
  • Their version of democracy had no elections– draw of the hat
  • Plato: Democracy would not be rule by the ppl, but the poor and uneducated against the rich and educated
  • Aristotle: There are conditions in which the will of all people is equal or wiser than the will of the few
  • Feared that poor people would rule to benefit themselves
  • Because power was randomized people often favoured monarchy over democracy
• When did democracy become more appealing?

  French and American revolution

  • Representative gov and democracy became synonymous
  • Shift away from absolutism
  • the idea that there is such thing as absolute rule
  • distinction between aristocracy and the rule of people solidified
• Were dictatorships always bad?

  Historically

  • Dictator was seen as an extraordinary person nominated under exceptional emergency circumstances
  • They were entrusted because of their wisdom, education etc.

  Today - Synonymous with autocracy, tyranny and despotism
• Concepts

  Mental categories that capture the meaning of objects, events or ideas
• Concepts exist in our heads, not perfectly in the real world. How can we test whether our theoretical concepts/claims about the world?

  • We must translate our concepts into concrete measures that we can observe
• Measure or indicator

  • A quantification of the thing we are interested in
• Operationalization

  The process by which abstract theoretical concepts are translated into concrete and observable measures or indicators.
• When we measure a conduct empirical tests of our theories it's important to remember

  • We evaluate solely the indicators that correlate with OUR version of a theory
  • empirical tests are only as good to the extent that our indicators accurately capture our concept
• Dahl's minimalist, or procedural view of democracy

  • Classifies political regimes in regard to their institutions and procedures
• Dahl's two dimensions of democracy

  • Two dimensions
  • Contestation
  • Extent to which citizens are free to organize themselves politically
  • ex) Freedom of speech & assembly, free & fair elections
  • Inclusions
  • Who gets to participate in democratic process
  • ex) Immigration naturalization, who can vote
• Country examples of inclusions and exclusions

  Soviet union

  • High: Inclusion
  • Everyone allowed to vote
  • Low: Contestation
  • Had one political party

  China

  • Low: Inclusion
  • No elections above municipal level
  • Low: Contestation
  • Had one political party
• Polyarchy

  Dahl's word used to describe political regimes with high levels of contestation and inclusion

  • Believed that countries could never be an ideal democracy, just closer or farther
• DD measures conceptualization of democracy

  Democracy: "regimes in which governmental offices are filled as a consequence of contested elections”

  • Two components
  • Governmental offices
  • Has executive and legislative branches
  • Both branches are elected
  • Contestation
  • Presence of an opposition that has a chance of winning through elections
• Three elements of DD's measure of contestation

  • ex ante uncertainty: the outcome of the election is unknown before it happens
  • ex post irreversibility: the winner of the election actually takes office,
  • repeatability: elections that meet the first two criteria must occur at regular and known intervals
• Examples of countries that fail DD measure of democracy

  • Iraq - Winner of election is known with certainty (ex ante uncertainty)
  • Algeria - Winner of election was intervened by army (ex post irreversibility)
  • Weimar Germany - Nazi's came into power but cancelled further electoral contests (repeatability)
• DD measure: Country is a dictatorship if it fails one of these four conditions

  1. The chief executive is elected.
  2. The legislature is elected.
  3. There is more than one party competing in the elections.
  4. An alternation in power under identical electoral rules has taken place.

  • Alternation of power = chief executive is replaced

  Conclusions

  • Existence of elections is not enough
• DD measure compared to Dahl

  • Both
  • Based on purely procedural, or minimalist view of democracy
  • No mention of outcomes
  • Differences
  • DD ignores Dahl's dimensions of inclusion
  • DD: Regimes are a dichotomy - either democratic or dictatorships
  • Can't be equally democratic and dictatorship
  • Dahl: it's a continuum – strong democracy on one side and strong dictatorship on other
• DD measure vs Dahl's

  Continuous measure: can take on any intermediate value within a given range (for example, “height in centimeters”).

  Dichotomous measure: has only two discrete categories or values (for example, “tall” or “short”).

  
• Polity IV

  1. Democracy Score minus Autocracy Score
  2. Five dimensions
  3. the competitiveness of executive recruitment,
  4. the openness of executive recruitment,
  5. the constraints that exist on the executive

  • Emphasizes limits on government

  1. the regulation of political participation
  2. the competitiveness of political participation

  
• Comparison of DD, Polity IV, and Freedom House: Conceptualization

  • Substantive view: Does this regime result in (OUTCOME: ex. Altercation of powers, free elections)?
  • Minimalist view: Does it have (THING: ex. institution, written rights)?
• Comparison of DD, Polity IV, and Freedom House: Conceptualization

  S holds a concept accountable to our conceptualization (our measures)

  • Qs about: What does democracy look like?
  • Does democracy(concept) result in higher levels of political expression(conceptualization)?

  M holds our conceptualization(our measures) accountable to our concept

  • Qs about: What is necessary to create our democracy?
  • Does a free market(conceptualization)result in democracy(concept)
• Validity

  Refers to the extent to which our measures correspond to the concepts that they are intended to reflect.
• Issues that arise when we think about validity

  1. Attributes
  2. Aggregation issues
  3. Measurement level
• Issues that arise when we think about validity

  • Attributes
  • Too many = nothing can be classified– not useful
  • Too few = everything can be classified– not useful
  • Aggregation issues (when concept is a scale)
  • How does each attribute contribute to the level of classification
  • Measurement level(solution to?^)
• Reliability

  Refers to the extent to which the measurement process repeatedly and consistently produces the same score for a given case.

  • If several people are given the same instructions, will the results be the same?
  • or is there room for bias, interpretation, normative definitions etc.
  • Look at your measures
  • are they observable or subjective judgements

  
• Reliable: DD measure – Not reliable: Freedom House, Polity IV

  Interval measure: Freedom House, Polity IV – Nominal measure: DD measure

  Minimalist view: DD measure, Polity IV – Substantive view: Freedom House

  Replicable: DD measure, Polity IV - Not replicable: Freedom House
• Replicability refers to the ability of third-party scholars to reproduce the process through which a measure is created.

  Scholars must

  • provide clear coding rules and make their disaggregated data available
  • DA-RT
  • Data access
  • Should be public
  • Production transparency
  • How data was produced?
  • Analytic transparency
  • clear how their data and analyses support their claims and inferences
• Minimalist Schumpeterian definition of democracy

  "a system in which rulers are selected by competitive elections"
• Freedom House (Assumption: More freedom = More democratic)

  • Two dimensions
  • Political rights
  • Electoral Process
  • Political pluralism and participation
  • Functioning of government
  • Civil liberties
  • Freedom of expression and belief
  • Associational and organizational rights
  • Rule of law
  • Personal autonomy and individual rights
  • Comparison to Dahl
  • Both: Continuum
  • Differences: FH is substantive view of democracy
  • "While particular institutions are necessary, they aren't sufficient"
• Limitations of minimalist definition of democracy

  -Blunt and perhaps misleading

  -Strikes many people that democracy is substantively better than dictatorship
• Benefits/problems with complex measures like V-DEM, Freedom House

  -Discriminating positively,

  -May have coverage issues and be hard to replicate
• Benefits/problems with simple measures like DD

  easy to replicate, highly reliable, but may fail to discriminate between regimes
• What does it mean to be valid and reliable

  is the intentional consistently being met?
• property of coding process (simplicity, clarity, transparency)

  replicability
• Property of the measure

  reliability
• Interval measure


  Places observations on a scale so that we can tell how much more or else of the thing being measured each observation exhibits
• Ordinal measure


  Rank-orders observations
• Nominal measure


  Classifies observations into discrete categories that must be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive