While writing and thinking about Labour Party governance, I asked myself the question how does one measure democraciness? My reading for that article pointed me at two data sets that allow one to answer this question for Nation States. These are the Polity IV index and the Economist Information Unit’s Democracy Index. The key white paper for Polity IV is, CONCEPTUALIZING AND MEASURING DEMOCRACY Evaluating Alternative Indices, by MUNCK & VERKUILEN, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 2002 and the Economist defines its methodology in this paper, The Economist Intelligence Unit’s index of democracy by Laza Kekic dated 2007 which lists their 60 attributes of democracy.
I have decided to examine the Economist’s methodology to see if it can be used to help understand the democraciness of non-Nation State entities. However, I went through the questions and scored the UK according to my own judgements. The rest of this article looks at the Economist’s methodology and my findings about the UK’s democracy. …
The Economist’s methodology measures 60 attributes which it gathers into six classes, the Electoral Process and Pluralism, Functioning of Government, Political Participation, Political Culture and Civil Liberties. I like the breadth of the 60 questions and its very useful to test one’s preconceptions against someone else’s tests. The Economist is a famously pro-capitalist…
