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Where Are the People? A Call for People-Centred Concepts and Measurements of Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2015

Renske Doorenspleet
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Abstract

This article aims to bring the people to the heart of democracy measurement. Existing measurements have reinforced the idea that democracy is the domain of the state with its procedures, institutions and political elites. But where are the people in those measurements? So far, when we measure democracy we rely on experts who determine what democracy is, while people’s views have been ignored. This happens not only during the phase of conceptualization, but also during operationalization. The specific way we measure democracy feeds elitism and is emblematic of how our discipline has developed, namely an ivory tower in which political scientists define and measure democracy without taking people’s views seriously. The article proposes new people-centred measures of democracy and discusses their effect on the rankings of countries and their strengths and weaknesses. The future of the study of democracy lies in developing new measures that challenge our current understanding of democracy and assist us in developing new perspectives, thus reinvigorating democracy studies.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 50 , Special Issue 3: 50th Anniversary Special Issue THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY , July 2015 , pp. 469 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015.

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Footnotes

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Renske Doorenspleet is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. Contact email: [email protected].

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