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Comparisons and Contrasts v6

Profile image of Staffan I. LindbergStaffan I. Lindberg

2016

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Abstract

In the second section we discuss in general terms how the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project differs from extant indices and how the novel approach taken by V-Dem might assist the work of activists, professionals, and scholars. Appendix A addresses the possible uses of V-Dem for program evaluation, Appendix B offers a glossary of key terms used in this document, and Appendix C clarifies search terms used for several analyses in Table . Many attempts have been made to measure democracy. It is somewhat complicated to identify these indices because they do not always refer explicitly to democracy. Nonetheless, we include an index in our survey if it is commonly viewed as representing democracy or some aspect of democracy, and if it features fairly broad country coverage. This includes the BNR index developed by Bernhard, Nordstrom & Reenock (2001); the Bertelsmann Transformation Index ("BTI") directed by the Bertelsmann Stiftung (various years); the Democracy Barometer developed by Wolfgang Merkel & associates (Bühlmann, Merkel, Müller & Weßels 2012); the BMR index developed by Boix, Miller & Rosato (2013), the Contestation and Inclusiveness indices developed by Coppedge, Alvarez, & Maldonado (2008); the Political Rights, Civil Liberty, Nations in Transit, and Countries at the Crossroads indices, all sponsored by Freedom House (freedomhouse.org); the Economist Intelligence Unit (2010) index ("EIU"); the Unified Democracy Scores ("UDS") developed by Pemstein, Meserve & Melton (2010); the Polity2 index from the Polity IV database (Marshall, Gurr & Jaggers 2014); the democracy-dictatorship ("DD") index developed by Adam Przeworski & colleagues (Alvarez, Cheibub, Limongi & Przeworski 1996; Cheibub, Gandhi & Vreeland 2010); the Lexical index of electoral democracy developed by Skaaning, Gerring & Bartusevičius (2015); the Competition and Participation indices developed by Tatu Vanhanen (2000); and the Voice and Accountability index developed as part of the Worldwide Governance Indicators ("WGI") (Kaufmann, Kraay & Mastruzzi 2010). 2 In order to make comparisons in a systematic fashion we summarize key features of 2 Other indices, not included in Table , may be briefly listed: the Political Regime Change [PRC] dataset

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