The quality of democracies in Europe as measured by current indicators of democratization and good governance

Abstract

Despite the steady wave of democratization in recent decades, the progress towards and the levels of democracy vary considerably across Europe. Many studies have been conducted to provide a differentiated outlook at the quality of democracy in each individual country; however, very few attempts have been made to aid the aggregation of discrete information in order to provide some comparative yardsticks for the evaluation of continuing developments. A fresh analytical framework broadly defines the quantitative indicators for democratization and good governance, which in turn allows us to draw meaningful distinctions between liberal democracies and non-democracies, and also to identify certain sub-types of democratic and non-democratic cases.

Notes

Giuseppe Di Palma, To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

See, for example, Axel Hadenius (ed.), Democracy's Victory and Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Susan J. Pharr and Robert D. Putnam, Disaffected Democracies: What's Troubling the Trilateral Countries? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).

See also Leonardo Morlino, ‘What is a “Good” Democracy? Theory and Empirical Analysis’, paper prepared for the CPS Session on ‘The Quality of Democracy in the Twenty-First Century’, International Sociological Association World Congress, Brisbane, Australia, 7–13 July 2002.

David Beetham and Stuart Weir, ‘Democratic Audit in Comparative Perspective’, in Hans-Joachim Lauth et al., Empirische Demokratiemessung (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2000), pp.73–88.

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), ‘State of Democracy: Trends from the Pilot Countries’, Working Paper, Stockholm, 2001.

See also Giovanni Sartori (ed.), Social Science Concepts: A Systematic Analysis (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1984).

See also Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), pp.4ff.

See also Juan J. Linz, ‘Some Thoughts on the Victory and Future of Democracy’, in Dirk Berg-Schlosser (ed.), Democratization, (Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 2004) pp.102–20.

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See Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971); Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead, Transitions From Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Axel Hadenius, Democracy and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Georg Sørensen, Democracy and Democratization (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993); Larry J. Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Empirische Demokratieforschung: Exemplarische Analysen (Frankfurt: Campus, 1999), Vol.3, Studien zur Demokratieforschung.

See, for example, Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960); Seymour Martin Lipset, ‘The Social Requisites of Democracy Revisited’, American Sociological Review, Vol.59, No.1 (1994), pp.1–22.

See, for example, Talcott Parsons and Edward A. Shils (eds.), Toward a General Theory of Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952); David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965).

Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Jeremy Mitchell, ‘Introduction’, in Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Jeremy Mitchell (eds.), Conditions of Democracy in Europe, 1919–39: Systematic Case-Studies (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp.1–40.

See, for example, Adam Przeworski, Susan C. Stokes and Bernard Manin, Democracy, Accountability, and Representation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

See Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Democracy for a New Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984).

See Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Cambridge: Polity, 1988).

See, for example, Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

For a fuller discussion of such measures and their respective strengths and weaknesses, see also Alex Inkeles (ed.), On Measuring Democracy (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1991); David Beetham, Defining and Measuring Democracy (London: Sage, 1994); Lauth et al., Empirische Demokratiemessung; Joe Foweraker and Roman Krznaric, ‘Measuring Liberal Democratic Performance: An Empirical and Conceptual Critique’, Political Studies, Vol.48, No.4 (2000), pp.759–87; Dirk Berg-Schlosser, ‘Indicators of Democratization and Good Governance as Measures of the Quality of Democracy: A Critical Appraisal’, paper prepared for the International Sociological Association Congress, Brisbane, Australia, 7–13 July 2002.

Tatu Vanhanen, The Emergence of Democracy: A Comparative Study of 119 States, 1850–1979 (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1984); Tatu Vanhanen, Prospects of Democracy: A Study of 172 Countries (London: Routledge, 1997). The data are taken from the data file ‘Democratization and Power Resources 1850–2000’ (2003), author: Tatu Vanhanen, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Tampere; distributor: Finnish Social Science Data Archive.

Kenneth Jaggers and Ted R. Gurr, Polity III: Regime Change and Political Authority, 1800–1994, 2nd edn (Boulder, CO: ICPSR, 1996); Monty G. Marshall, Keith Jaggers and Ted Robert Gurr, Polity IV: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2001 (Maryland, MD: University of Maryland, Integrated Network for Societal Conflict Research, Centre for International Development and Conflict Management, 2001).

Freedom House, Freedom in the World (New York: Freedom House, 1978 onwards).

See Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay and M. Mastruzzi, Governance Matters III: Governance Indicators for 1996–2002 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003).

See PIOOM – Interdisciplinary Research Programme on Causes of Human Rights Violations, World Conflict and Human Rights Map 2001/2002 (Leiden: PIOOM, 2002).

For details, see Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay and Pablo Zoido-Lobatón, Aggregating Governance Indicators, policy research working paper no.2195 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1999).

See Foweraker and Krznaric, ‘Measuring Liberal Democratic Performance’; Gerardo L. Munck and Jay Verkuilen, ‘Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: Evaluating Alternative Indices’, Comparative Political Studies, Vol.35, No.1 (2002), pp.5–34.

For the use of this term, see also Diamond, Developing Democracy.

See Kaufman et al., Governance Matters III.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report (New York: UNDP, 1990 onwards).

The data for the tax share are taken from the OECD Revenue Statistics (Paris: OSCE, 2002).

See Dirk Berg-Schlosser, ‘Typologies of Third World Political Systems’, in Anton Bebler and Jim Seroka (eds.), Contemporary Political Systems: Classification and Typologies (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990), pp.173–201; Berg-Schlosser, ‘Indicators of Democratization’; Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Material Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

A low value here indicates a low score on these dimensions, and corresponds to a low level of distribution of power resources, or conversely, a high level of inequality.

That is, the ‘internal validity’ in Cook and Campbell's sense: see Thomas D. Cook and David Campbell, Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1979).

See, for example, Juan J. Linz, ‘Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy: Does It Make a Difference?’, in Juan Linz and Arturo Valenzuela (eds.), The Failure of Presidential Democracy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).

See, for example, Manfred G. Schmidt, ‘Das politische Leistungsprofil der Demokratien’, in Michael Greven (ed.), Demokratie – eine Kultur des Westens? (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1998), pp.181–99.

See Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).

Charles C. Ragin, Dirk Berg-Schlosser and Gisèle De Meur, ‘Political Methodology: Qualitative Methods in Macropolitical Inquiry’, in Robert Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann (eds.), A New Handbook of Political Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp.749–68; Dirk Berg-Schlosser and S. Quenter, ‘Macro-Quantitative vs. Macro-Qualitative Methods in Political Science: Advantages and Disadvantages of Comparative Procedures Using the Welfare-State Theory as an Example’, Historical Social Research, Vol.21, No.1 (1996), pp.3–25.