How Do Citizens Evaluate Democracy?
Democracy – literally, rule by the people – is one of the most desirable political systems in the world. But despite its etymological roots, democracy is a highly complex concept that includes many diverse institutions and functions, some of which are difficult to measure and quantify. Moreover, the degree to which people perceive their governments as democratic depends on the individual’s subjective perception and experience. Therefore, the evaluation of a government’s democratic qualities is highly variable across individuals and countries.
Consequently, it is challenging to find a single measure that adequately captures a global view of how well a democracy functions. Nevertheless, several approaches have been developed that aim to find an aggregate measure of citizens’ evaluations of democracy. These approaches vary in their approach and how they combine and weight the various indicators to create an overall score.
The definitions of democracy and its underlying attributes are contested, but they typically encompass representation of the people in policy making, fundamental rights, checks on government, impartial administration, and a wide range of participation opportunities. They are also typically defined in terms of how well these characteristics are fulfilled in a specific context, such as how elections are conducted and whether they include competing parties.
Since the start of the 21st century, there has been a growing interest in measuring democracy and its different aspects. Currently, most measures of democracy rely on individual indicators to gauge a finite number of characteristics. This article builds on previous work by investigating the possibility of combining multiple indicators in order to assess how citizens evaluate democracy. Specifically, the authors use the special module in the sixth round of the European Social Survey (ESS) and apply Bayesian factor analysis with country random effects to identify the extent to which multiple indicators form an underlying trait that describes citizens’ evaluations of democracy.
In order to assess the underlying trait, the authors use a method known as Bayesian latent variable modeling with an iteratively selected list of 116 individual political indicators from 13 sources. The resulting underlying trait explains 18% of the variance in citizens’ evaluations of democracy at the country level. Considering that the ESS consists of over 30 thousand individuals in 36 countries, this indicates that a substantial amount of variation in citizens’ evaluations of democracy can be explained by the underlying traits.
Several of the individual political indicators used in this study have been extensively described in the literature (Morlino, Reference Morlino2011; Buhlmann, Reference Buhlmann, Merkel, Muller and Wessels2012; Munck and Verkuilen, Reference Munck and Verkuilen2002). To examine how these different political attributes are related to each other, they construct a matrix that contains the core measurement, aggregating and weighting rules of each of these underlying traits. This matrix is complemented by three additional dimensions that reflect specific features of a democracy, such as whether those in power explain their choices to voters and the media provide them with reliable information. These dimensions show lower slopes but nonetheless contribute to the underlying trait.
Democracy – literally, rule by the people – is one of the most desirable political systems in the world. But despite its etymological roots, democracy is a highly complex concept that includes many diverse institutions and functions, some of which are difficult to measure and quantify. Moreover, the degree to which people perceive their governments as democratic depends on the individual’s subjective perception and experience. Therefore, the evaluation of a government’s democratic qualities is highly variable across individuals and countries. Consequently, it is challenging to find a single measure that adequately captures a global view of how well a democracy functions. Nevertheless, several approaches have been developed that aim to find an aggregate measure of citizens’ evaluations of democracy. These approaches vary in their approach and how they combine and weight the various indicators to create an overall score. The definitions of democracy and its underlying attributes are contested, but they typically encompass representation of the people in policy making, fundamental rights, checks on government, impartial administration, and a wide range of participation opportunities. They are also typically defined in terms of how well these characteristics are fulfilled in a specific context, such as how elections are conducted and whether they include competing parties. Since the start of the 21st century, there has been a growing interest in measuring democracy and its different aspects. Currently, most measures of democracy rely on individual indicators to gauge a finite number of characteristics. This article builds on previous work by investigating the possibility of combining multiple indicators in order to assess how citizens evaluate democracy. Specifically, the authors use the special module in the sixth round of the European Social Survey (ESS) and apply Bayesian factor analysis with country random effects to identify the extent to which multiple indicators form an underlying trait that describes citizens’ evaluations of democracy. In order to assess the underlying trait, the authors use a method known as Bayesian latent variable modeling with an iteratively selected list of 116 individual political indicators from 13 sources. The resulting underlying trait explains 18% of the variance in citizens’ evaluations of democracy at the country level. Considering that the ESS consists of over 30 thousand individuals in 36 countries, this indicates that a substantial amount of variation in citizens’ evaluations of democracy can be explained by the underlying traits. Several of the individual political indicators used in this study have been extensively described in the literature (Morlino, Reference Morlino2011; Buhlmann, Reference Buhlmann, Merkel, Muller and Wessels2012; Munck and Verkuilen, Reference Munck and Verkuilen2002). To examine how these different political attributes are related to each other, they construct a matrix that contains the core measurement, aggregating and weighting rules of each of these underlying traits. This matrix is complemented by three additional dimensions that reflect specific features of a democracy, such as whether those in power explain their choices to voters and the media provide them with reliable information. These dimensions show lower slopes but nonetheless contribute to the underlying trait.
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