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Freedom house

Comparative Politics , Marco Giuliani. 07/05/2012. Freedom house. Matteo Demontis. Conceptualization. Freedom. Civil Liberties. Political Rights. Rating Process. Political Rights (10 + 2 questions ) Electoral Process (3) Political Pluralism and Participation (4)

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Freedom house

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  1. Comparative Politics, Marco Giuliani 07/05/2012 Freedom house Matteo Demontis

  2. Conceptualization Freedom CivilLiberties PoliticalRights

  3. Rating Process • PoliticalRights (10 + 2 questions) • ElectoralProcess (3) • PoliticalPluralism and Participation (4) • FunctioningofGovernment (3) 4. DiscretionaryQuestions (2)

  4. Rating Process • CivilLiberties (15 questions) • FreedomofExpression and Belief (4) • Associational and OrganizationalRights (3) • RuleofLaw (4) • Personal Autonomy and IndividualRights (4)

  5. Scoring DegreeofAdherenceto International HumanRightsStandards: 0 No goodpractices 1FewgoodpracticesOR Some goodpractices, but no goodlaws 2 Some goodpracticesOR Manygoodpractices, butfewgoodlaws 3ManygoodpracticesOR Most/allgoodpractices, and some goodlaws 4Most/allgoodpractices and correspondinggoodlaws

  6. Aggregation

  7. Aggregation

  8. Links Results 2012: http://www.freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-world Checklist Questions: http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2011/checklist-questions-and-guidelines Methodology: http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2012/methodology

  9. Critiques • Maximalistdefinition • No clearcodingrule • No disaggregate data • Internalcoherence

  10. Francesca Casarico Aim: coding the authority characteristics of states in the world system for purposes of comparative, quantitative analysis Unit of analysis: “polity”: political or governmental organization; a society or institution with an organized government; state; body politic States with total population greater than 500.000 Annual coding for 164 states over the years 1800-2010 Main index: examines concomitant qualities of democratic and autocratic authority: Executive recruitment Constraints on executive authority Political competition

  11. Operationalindicators

  12. The Polity score • Computedbysubtracting the authocracy score from the democracy score • 21 point scale rangingfrom -10 (hereditarymonarchy) to +10 (consolidateddemocracy) • Spectrumthatspansfromfullyistitutionalizedauthocraciesthroughmixed, or inchoerent, authority regimestofullyinstitutionalizeddemocracies. autocraciesanocraciesdemocracies + standardizedcodes: - 66: interruptionperiod - 77: interregnumperiod - 88: transitionperiod -10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  13. Country-year format State “continuity and change”

  14. Polity-case format Regime “persistence and change”

  15. Critiques • Too minimal definition • Inappropriate aggregation procedure • Conceptuallogic: problemofredundancy

  16. INDEX OF EFFECTIVE DEMOCRACY (Welzel & Inglehart) Gaia Lovisolo

  17. CREATION OF THE INDEX They start from the Freedom House index but they create a new index that keeps into consideration not only the extent to which formal liberties are institutionalized, but also the extent to which they are actually practiced.

  18. ELEMENTS OF THE INDEX • Effective (liberal) democracy vs Formal (electoral) democracy To differentiate between the two we look at the elite behavior, because it determines weather democratic rules are genuinely applied, or weather democracy exists only in name • Self-expression values Strongly correlated with: • Socioeconomic development • Democratic institutions They work together to broaden autonomous human choice

  19. PROCESS Socioeconomic development Self-expression values Democratic institutions and liberal democracy

  20. Construction of the index Freedom House measure of civil and political rights World bank's anticorruption score (indicator of ”elite integrity”) x EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THIS GENUINE MEASURE OF DEMOCRACY AND SELF-EXPRESSION VALUES, WE FIND A STRONG CORRELATION OF R=0.90 ACROSS 73 NATIONS.

  21. Figure 7-1 Self-expression values and formal democracy.

  22. Figure 7-2. Self-expression values and Effective Democracy

  23. Possible critique? Direction of causality

  24. Comparative Positive, Marco Giuliani 07/05/2012 The Economist Intelligence Unit’s DemocracyIndex Angelica Puricelli

  25. The overall index is based on five categories, each rating on a 0 to 10 score, so the overall index is the simple average of them : • Electoral process and pluralism • Civil liberties • Functioning of government • Political participation • Political culture Each category indexes is based on the sum of the 60 indicators score with a combination of a dichotomous and a three-point scoring system, then they are converted to a scale of 0 to 10. Adjustments to the category scores are made if countries do not score a 1 in the following critical areas for democracy: • Whether national elections are free and fair; • The security of voters; • The influence of foreign powers on government; • The capability of the civil service to implement policies.

  26. Each country can be classified as: • Full democracy (score: from 8 to 10) • Flawed democracy (score: from 6 to 7.9) • Hybrid regime (score: from 4 to 5.9) • Authoritarian regime (below 4) Features of the index: • Use of public opinion surveys (in “political partecipation” and in “political culture”) • Participation and voter turnout are seen as legitimacy of the current system (positive relation with democracy) • The predominance of the legislative branches over the executive power has a positive correlation with the measure of the overall democracy.

  27. Democracyindexby regime type

  28. Democracyindexaveragebyregion

  29. Critiques • Bias • Turnout and the predominanceof legislative

  30. ACPL database model(Alvarez, Cheibub, Przeworski, Limongi) “DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT: POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS AND MATERIAL WELL-BEING IN THE WORLD, 1950-1990 “ IMPACT OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Giulia Frenquellucci

  31. Empiricalfeatures 135 countries; 4126 observations; 105 variables Variables Examples REG: Dummy variable coded 1 for dictatorships and 0 for democracies. Transition years are coded as the regime that emerges in that year. For instance, there was a transition from democracy to dictatorship in Argentina in 1955. In that year, REG=1 ; MOBILIZE: Classification of political regimes in which dictatorships are distinguished by the presence of political parties. Coded 0 if democracy; 1 if mobilizing dictatorship (with parties); 2 if exclusionary dictatorship (without parties). Transition years are coded as the regime that emerges in that year ; ETHNIC: Percentage of population of the largest ETHNIC group, measured in the year for which data were available (roughly 1976-1985). [The Economist 1988 and Vanhanen 1992]. ; LEGSELEC: Legislative selection. Coded 0 if no legislature exists (includes cases in which there is a constituent assembly without ordinary legislative powers); 1 non-elective legislature (examples include the selection of legislators by the effective executive, or on the basis of heredity or ascription); 2 if elective (legislators, or members of the lower house in a bicameral system, are selected by means of either direct or indirect popular election). [Banks 1996, but modified and completed where appropriate].

  32. DICHOTOMOUS MEASUREMENT[a measure that has only two discrete categories of values] Democracy Dictatorship The chief executive is elected; The legislature is elected; There is more than one party competing in the election; An alternation in power under identical electoral rules has taken place; If these don’t hold

  33. Underlying Principles The importanceofcontestedelections Minimalist definition ( Schumpeterian ) of democracy “examine empirically, rather than decide by definition, whether the repeated holding of contested elections is associated with other features at times attributed to democracies: social and economic equality, control by citizens over politicians, effective exercise of political rights, widespread participation, freedom from arbitrary violence.” Two logically independent claims: • A validity claim: democracy is first a question of kind before it is one of degree (as Sartori says “classify before quantify”) • A reliability claim: dichotomy contains less error in measurement than do graded measurements (like the ones that for example allow the presence of categories such as semi-democracy).

  34. Criticisms: • Reich et al. • Dichotomous measurement appears both methodologically regressive and lacking in face validity. • Impossible to exclude from the analysis categories like semi-democracies when these have been a very frequent outcome of regime change.

  35. Vanhanen’s index of democracy Marija Zalimaite

  36. Tatu Vanhanen– emeritus professor at University of Tampere and the University of Helsinki • The index covers 187 countries from 1810 to 2000

  37. 7 variables • Vanhanen’s country number • Year • Competition • Participation • Index of democracy • State name abbreviation from the Correlates of War project (COW) • COW country number

  38. Competition • The smaller parties’ share of the votes cast in parliamentary or presidential elections, or both – to indicate the degree of competition • Calculated by subtracting the % of votes won by the largest party from 100

  39. Participation • The % of population which actually voted in the same elections • Calculated from total population

  40. Index of Democracy (ID) • Competition and Participation combined into Index of Democratization • Minimum thresholds: 30% of Competition, 10% of Participation and 5.0 index points for ID

  41. Italy : Competition – 65.2; Participation – 65.56; ID – 42.75 • USA : Comp – 51.3; Part – 37.19; ID – 19.08 • UK : Comp – 56.8; Part – 53.7; ID – 30.15 • China: Comp – 0; Part – 0; ID – 0 • Egypt: Comp – 13.15; Part – 22.48; ID – 2.96 • Belarus: Comp – 15; Part – 47.97; ID – 7.2

  42. Polyarchy and Contestation scales by Coppedge & Reinicke

  43. SPSS file

  44. Variables • Polyarchy scale • Contestation scale The Contestation scale is a less precise but more reliable version of the Polyarchy scale.

  45. Free and Fair Elections Heads of the government are elected, no frauds Heads of the government are elected, frauds occur and are unpunished No meaningful elections

  46. Freedom of Organization No restrictions on purely political organizations that have not previously committed mass murder. Some political parties that have not committed mass murder are banned, but membership in some alternatives to official organizations is permitted. The only relatively independent organizations that are allowed to exist are nonpolitical. No independent organizations are allowed

  47. Freedom of Expression Citizens express their views on all topics without fear of punishment Dissent is discouraged, whether by informal pressure or by systematic censorship, but control is incomplete. All open dissent is forbidden and effectively suppressed.

  48. Availability of Alternative Sources of Information Alternative sources of information exist and are protected by law. Alternative sources of information are widely available but government versions are presented in preferential fashion. The government dominates the diffusion of information, alternative sources exist only for nonpolitical issues. There is no public alternative to official information.

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