1 / 16

Quality of Democracy. Democracy Barometer for Established Democracies

Quality of Democracy. Democracy Barometer for Established Democracies. Marc Bühlmann, Wolfgang Merkel, Bernhard Weßels NCCR Democracy: Project 14 Bratislava 7/3/2008. Structure of the Project: 7-step Analysis. 1st step: Fundamental principles of democracy 2nd step: Root Concept of Democracy

lynsey
Download Presentation

Quality of Democracy. Democracy Barometer for Established Democracies

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Quality of Democracy.Democracy Barometer for Established Democracies Marc Bühlmann, Wolfgang Merkel, Bernhard Weßels NCCR Democracy: Project 14 Bratislava 7/3/2008

  2. Structure of the Project: 7-step Analysis 1st step: Fundamental principles of democracy 2nd step: Root Concept of Democracy 3rd step: From partial regimes to functions 4th step: From functions to components 5th step: From components to indicators 6th step: Measuring the quality of democracy 7th step: Research beyond measurement

  3. 1st Step: The Principles of Democracy • Equality (political) • Freedom (individual) • Control (institutional)

  4. 2nd Step: Root Concept: The concept of embedded democracy Social and economic requisites Civil society Stateness Civil rights Political liberties C B Electoral regime A D E Horizontal Effective power Civil Liberties accountability to rule

  5. Internal Embeddedness • Mutual embeddedness • Normative and functional interdependence • Normative and functional independence

  6. 3rd Step: From Partial Regimes to Functions

  7. 4th Step: From Partial Regimes and its Functions to Components 1. Electoral regime: representation, accountability • Universal active suffrage • Universal passive suffrage • Free and fair elections 2. Political-rights regime: participation, responsiveness • Freedom of opinion • Freedom to associate and to form coalitions • Equal political rights to participate

  8. 4th Step (cont‘d) 3. Civil-rights regime: freedom • Individual rights • Equality before the law • Equal access to courts 4. Horizontal-accountability regime: constraint of executive autonomy • Checks and balances • Independence of the judiciary • Rule of law (binding rules for the executive) 5. Effective power to govern: government autonomy • National territorial dimension • National functional dimension • Global dimension

  9. 5th Step: From Components to Indicators

  10. 6th Step: Measurement: first option: structural Evaluation cobwebs – fictional examples for three cases Performance of partial regimes

  11. Vertical accountability 100,00 90,00 80,00 Governmental autonomy Representation 70,00 60,00 50,00 40,00 30,00 Mutual constraints of constitutional powers 20,00 Participation 10,00 0,00 Rule of law Responsiveness Individual liberty Transparency 2. Option: functional model The Dimensions of Democracy: Fictional Example

  12. Political Participation in Spain

  13. The Status and Development of Political Participation • Equality of electoral participation and the equality of qualified participation are very high • Effective use of participation (electoral and non-institutionalized) is poor as is the access to information - Selectivity of the use of alternative participation instruments and lack of access to information has decreased  Access to information and alternative participation instruments have to be strengthened

  14. Political Participation in Spain(30 OECD Countries) Source: Democracy Barometer, preliminary results.

  15. Overall Performance: Cross-regime / Cross-function Means

  16. 7th Step: Research Perspectives Beyond Measurement Overarching question: What is the (causal) link between institutional designs and quality of democracy? • Which institutional design shows the highest quality of democracy? • Is the quality of democracy a function of the institutional design? • Which specific interdependencies in the quality of democracy can be observed between the partial regimes? • Changes of the democratic quality over time (retrospectively): different developments? Which components/functions particularly improved/ worsened? • Can the changes of democratic quality be explained by changes of the institutional designs?

More Related