![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
Most procedural definitions and measurements of democracy are missing one crucial component: direct popular decision-making. This is an important gap that does not allow users of data to ascertain some important variation among democracies. Thus, I propose a new measure that is strongly anchored in a procedural definition of democracy but includes this missing dimension. The proposed measure is well rooted in the literature and introduces a dimension whereby citizens may become the masters of their political fate at any time and without the consent of elected authorities, while avoiding the inclusion of extraneous attributes that are not highlighted in democratic theory. Tests of the validity of the new indicator, using Latin American cases, show that there is enough room for its inclusion without the typical collinearity problems this literature faces. This indicator is not only sound, but it is empirically appealing as it performs better than others when testing relevant hypotheses.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Ryan Carlin, Terry Karl, Juan Pablo Luna, Leonardo Morlino, Gerardo Munck, Guillermo O'Donnell, and Philippe Schmitter. I also want to thank the anonymous referees of Democratization for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper.This research is framed within the FONDECYT's Project N° 1110368, and the Millennium Nucleus for the Study of Stateness and Democracy in Latin America, Project NS100014. All caveats apply.
Notes
Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, 340.
Coppedge, ‘Democracy and Dimensions’, 35.
For example Freedom House includes the right to own property and establish private businesses and Polity IV omits participation. While the first might be superfluous, the second does not fit the theory.
By popular I am not referring to how fashionable something is (popular v. unpopular); I am simply relating to the people. From this point on, ‘direct popular decision-making’ could be read as ‘direct citizen decision-making’, or even simpler: ‘direct decision-making’.
I understand that I can be perfectly free under a representative government without popular direct decision-making. The world, in fact, is full of many cases in which great democratic rights exist without direct democracy. But there is not one single case of a country where participation and contestation flourish on the basis of direct democracy without solid representative institutions.
Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.
Ibid., 269.
Ward, ‘Green Binders in Cyberspace’, 47. Ward refers to the nine democracy indices studied in the already classic work of Munck and Verkuilen, ‘Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy’. It has to be said that despite there being a positive correlation among the existing democracy indexes, it does not mean that these correlated indexes do not sometimes have different biases (for example, judge biases) and confounders (for example, political stability).
Coppedge and Reinicke, ‘Measuring Polyarchy’; Coppedge, Alvarez, and Maldonado, ‘Two Persistent Dimensions of Democracy’. Another group of scholars has been deeply concerned about conceptual stretching, conflation and redundancies, muddled and inadequate coding rules, low discriminatory power, and the unsubstantiated aggregation rules of highly used indices (Skaaning, ‘Measuring Civil Liberty’; Munck and Verkuilen, ‘Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy’; Hadenius and Teorell, ‘Assessing Alternative Indices of Democracy’). In this regard see the pathbreaking work of Bollen and Grandjean, ‘The Dimension(s) of Democracy’.
Coppedge, Alvarez, and Maldonado, ‘Two Persistent Dimensions of Democracy’, 632.
Moving from a Dahlian two-dimensional space to a three-dimensional space opens up a space with eight boxes. Each of Dahl's four ideal types then covers two boxes: one with high direct democracy and one with low direct democracy. The question is then whether we can fill the boxes with cases. My answer is positive. For instance, Chile during the last decades of the nineteenth century was a competitive oligarchy without any direct democracy whatsoever. This type can be named ‘competitive oligarchy with low levels of direct democracy’. By contrast, Switzerland up until 1971 was a highly competitive oligarchy (with women and foreigners, and therefore more than half of its adult population, not enfranchised), but enjoyed high levels of direct democracy. A similar argument could be made regarding the many states of the United States up to the mid-1960s. These cases can be labelled ‘competitive oligarchies with high levels of direct democracy’. Of course, in regard to what Dahl called representative or closed hegemonies, actual cases of high direct democracy – as defined in this research – are much more difficult to find, but such cases are theoretically possible. Some dictators have systematically resorted to plebiscites for advancing their political interests, as demonstrated in the cases of Pinochet, Lukashenko, and Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier. Yet not all autocrats resort to mechanisms of direct democracy, as we see with the regimes of Hu Jintao, Somoza, or Pol Pot.
O'Donnell, ‘Exploración sobre el Desarrollo de la Democracia’.
Dunn, Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future, 16.
O'Donnell, ‘Exploración sobre el Desarrollo de la Democracia’, 49.
Walzer, Politics and Passion, 24.
Altman, Direct Democracy Worldwide, 5.
Pettit, ‘Deliberative Democracy’.
Mainwaring, ‘Presidentialism, Multipartism, and Democracy’, 198.
Hall and Taylor, ‘Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms’; Schofer and Fourcade-Gourinchas, ‘The Structural Contexts of Civic Engagement’.
Maravall, ‘Accountability and Manipulation’.
Stokes, Mandates and Democracy.
Pettit, ‘Deliberative Democracy’.
Here we are referring to broadly comparative – both in time and space – indices (such as Freedom House, Polity IV, Alvarez et al.). Needless to say is that there is a group of scholars that have provided us with some thoughtful measures of democracy, but they are just available for a few years given the enormous difficulty of reproducing them, that is, replicability is their major Achilles heel. See, for example: Bollen, ‘Issues in the Comparative Measurement of Political Democracy’; Bollen and Paxton, ‘Subjective Measures of Liberal Democracy’; Coppedge and Reinicke, ‘Measuring Polyarchy’; Hadenius, Democracy and Development.
Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics. On accountability see O'Donnell, ‘Exploración sobre el Desarrollo de la Democracia’. There is another group of scholars who work on ‘societal accountability’, for instance Smulovitz and Peruzzotti, ‘Societal and Horizontal Controls’. Yet, this literature focuses on non-institutional actors (protest movements and such).
Morlino, ‘What is a “Good” Democracy?’, 19.
Przeworski, Democracy and the Limits of Self-Government, 111. I am aware that people may well appeal against the decisions of the state and their review may have an effect not only on the plaintiff but on the collective, even retrospectively. Yet, these resources are only based on the unconstitutionality of certain rules and not on political decisions that fall within the law and spirit of the constitution.
A precedent for this attempt to identify a third dimension of polyarchy conjoined with Dahl's rubrics is provided by Santos, ‘Poliarquia em 3D’.
Altman, Direct Democracy Worldwide, 7.
Kaufmann and Waters, Direct Democracy in Europe, xix.
Hansen, ‘Direct Democracy, Ancient and Modern’, 44.
Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, 340.
Of course, such a conceptualization does not per se preclude or deny the possibility of abuse of bottom-up mechanisms of direct democracy by formal political actors. The attempt of Colombian President Uribe to obtain the legitimization for his re-election to a third consecutive term by means of a popular initiative is an excellent example of this point. Similarly, we could also mention a comparable move by Ukrainian President Kuchma in 2000 (Wheatley, ‘Direct Democracy in the Commonwealth of Independent States’). Thus, CI-MDDs are not always initiated by the ‘citizenry’. Yet, these cases are extremely rare, and usually presidents pursue routes for advancing their interests other than mobilization of their constituents (Altman, Direct Democracy Worldwide, 12). The bottom line is that, in a democratic context without relatively significant support from below, these measures do not prosper. Serdült and Welp, ‘Referendos e iniciativas populares’, do a great job of describing who the instigators of CI-MDDs are in Switzerland and beyond.
Gamble, ‘Putting Civil Rights to a Popular Vote’.
Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values.
Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited.
Hill, ‘Democratic Deficit in the ACT’.
Butler and Ranney, Referendums.
See for example: Donovan and Bowler, ‘Direct Democracy and Minority Rights’; Bowler and Donovan, Demanding Choices; Matsusaka, For the Many or the Few; Gerber, The Populist Paradox; Lupia and McCubbins, The Democratic Dilemma.
Kaufmann, Büchi, and Braun, Guidebook to Direct Democracy.
Papadopoulos, ‘Analysis of Functions and Dysfunctions of Direct Democracy’, 430.
This indiscriminate count of MDDs excels in Vanhanen's ‘Measures of Democracy 1810–2008’, which does not take care of the mentioned ‘direct democracy paradox’, and also departs from the risky assumption that plebiscites ‘have usually been held in nondemocratic countries’ (Vanhanen, ‘Measures of Democracy 1810–2008’, http://www.fsd.uta.fi/aineistot/taustatietoa/FSD1289/Introduction_2009.pdf; See also: http://www.fsd.uta.fi/english/data/catalogue/FSD1289/bgF1289e.html) (accessed December 16, 2011).
A precedent for this methodological choice is provided by Alvarez et al., ‘Classifying Political Regimes’, in the context of their development of a measure of democracy. They use an indicator of alternation: ‘Whenever a ruling party eventually suffered an electoral defeat and allowed the opposition to assume office, the regime is classified as democratic for the entire period this party was in power under the same rules’ (Alvarez et al., ‘Classifying Political Regimes’, 24).
There are several indices related to direct democracy but none are useful for this research. The work of Frey and associates (Frey, Kucher, and Stutzer, ‘Outcome, Process and Power in Direct Democracy’; Frey and Stutzer, ‘Happiness Prospers in Democracy’; Frey and Stutzer, ‘Happiness, Economy and Institutions’) provides an assessment of how extended democratic rights are perceived among Swiss cantons. The simple fact that they use a non-weighted average as composite index of different instruments of direct democracy explains their intentions not to differentiate among direct democratic instruments. We can also mention at least a handful of other examples: Breuer, ‘Costa Rica's 2007 Referendum’; Gross and Kaufmann, IRI Europe Country Index; Fiorino and Ricciuti, ‘Determinants of Direct Democracy’; Vatter, ‘Lijphart Expanded’. Nonetheless, none attempts to measure or to weight the democraticness of different MDDs, instead they measure ‘how much’ direct democracy a country has.
Altman, Direct Democracy Worldwide; Hautala, Kaufmann, and Wallis, Voices of Europe.
Popular initiatives can be launched regardless of the actions of representative institutions. Referendums, however, require representative institutions to move first. Otherwise they cannot be initiated. This is why many authors, with whom I agree, consider popular initiative the most democratic mechanism within the world of direct democracy. Also, popular initiatives can often be used as a functional substitute for referendums, but not vice versa.
Though extremely rare, it might be the case that a country allows for a popular initiative (n.3) but does not necessarily allow for a referendum (n.2); or a country allows for a referendum (n.2) but does not allow mandatory referendums (n.1). If this is the case, the coding refers to the highest.
Skaaning, ‘Measuring Civil Liberty’.
Peterlevitz, ‘Adding Direct Democracy Processes to an Assessment of Political Participation’; Bühlmann et al., ‘The Democracy Barometer’.
Goertz, Social Science Concepts; Munck, Measuring Democracy.
Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics; Hansen, ‘The Tradition of the Athenian Democracy’.
Goertz, Social Science Concepts.
Altman (Direct Democracy Worldwide, Chapter IV) provides several examples of regimes that without satisfying whatsoever the polyarchic minimums use direct decision-making for advancing particular political interests. Similar arguments can be found in He and Warren, ‘Authoritarian Deliberation’, in regard to Chinese politics and ‘deliberation’.
Goertz, Social Science Concepts.
To construct this data set I relied on ‘C2D-Research and Documentation Centre on Direct Democracy’, ‘Suchmaschine fur direkte Demokratie’, and ‘Keesing's Records of World Events’ (http://www.c2d.ch/; http://www.sudd.ch/index.php?lang=de; http://keesings.gvpi.net/ (accessed December 16, 2011)), Lissidini, Welp, and Zovatto, Democracia directa en Latinoamérica; Welp and Serdült, Armas de doble filo; and Renfer, Democracia directa en Argentina, Uruguay y Venezuela. The database includes 360 observations (18 countries from 1990 to 2009). Each observation corresponds to a country-year and the number of times MDDs occurred that year. I have also determined whether the MDD was constitutionally mandated, top-down, or citizen-initiated (with the concomitant division between popular initiatives and referendums).
For example, for the whole period under consideration Uruguay receives the score of 1 as it had referendums and popular initiatives since 1989. The constitutional reforms of 1996 did not affect direct democratic rights and practices. On the contrary, Paraguay receives zeros during these 18 years as no popular initiative, referendum, or even a mandated constitutional reform was directly voted by its citizens (this is so despite articles 121–3 and 290 of the Paraguayan Constitution, which explicitly open the door to such instruments).
Mainwaring, Brinks, and Pérez-Liñán, ‘Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America 1945–1999’; Mainwaring, Brinks, and Pérez-Liñán, ‘Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America 1945–2004’.
PNUD, La Democracia en América Latina; Munck, Measuring Democracy.
Mainwaring, Brinks, and Pérez-Liñán, ‘Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America 1945–2004’; Munck, Measuring Democracy.
For LAD's definition and coding criteria see Mainwaring, Brinks, and Pérez-Liñán, ‘Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America 1945–2004’, 123; for EDI's definition and coding criteria see Munck, Measuring Democracy, 91.
King, Keohane, and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry, 25; Munck, ‘Cannons of Research Design in Qualitative Analysis’; Munck, Measuring Democracy, 53.
Adcock and Collier, ‘Measurement Validity’.
Munck, Measuring Democracy, 60.
This is expected and inevitable as ‘polyarchy is concerned with the minimum requirements for political democracy’ (Coppedge and Reinicke, ‘Measuring Polyarchy’, 62).
Adcock and Collier, ‘Connecting Ideas with Facts’.
Tolbert, Bowen, and Donovan, ‘Initiative Campaigns’; Tolbert and Smith, ‘The Educative Effects of Ballot Initiatives on Voter Turnout’.
See Qvortrup, ‘A.V. Dicey’.
Frey, Kucher, and Stutzer, ‘Outcome, Process and Power in Direct Democracy’.
See Stimson, ‘Regression in Space and Time’; and Beck, ‘Time-Series-Cross-Section Data’.
By satisfaction I consider the addition of the percentage of people who answer ‘very satisfied’ and ‘satisfied’. By support for democracy I consider just those individuals who agreed with the following sentence: ‘La democracia es preferible a cualquier otra forma de gobierno’. http://www.latinobarometro.org/latino/LATAnalize.jsp (accessed December 16, 2011).
As this is the very first step in combining aspects of representative and direct democracy, I have also run the combination of components with different weights (80/20 and 70/30). The results are notably consistent with the results shown above.
Morlino, ‘What is a “Good” Democracy?’, 13–14.
Verhulst and Nijeboer, Direct Democracy, 12.
Nussbaum, Women and Human Development.
Munck, ‘The Study of Politics and Democracy’, 31.
Sen, Development as Freedom.
Paradoxically, these preconditions are often considered as consequences of democracy (Tsai, ‘Does Political Democracy Enhance Human Development in Developing Countries?’ ; Moon, The Political Economy of Basic Human Needs; Kaufman and Segura-Ubiergo, ‘Globalization, Domestic Politics, and Social Spending in Latin America’).
Collier and Levitsky, ‘Democracy with Adjectives’.
Munck, Measuring Democracy.
Goertz, Social Science Concepts.
Munck, Measuring Democracy, 16; see also Coppedge et al., ‘Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy’.
