Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T16:44:43.687Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Democracy for All: Conceptualizing and Measuring Egalitarian Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2018

Rachel Sigman  and
Staffan I. Lindberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although equality figures prominently in many foundational theories of democracy, liberal and electoral conceptions of democracy have dominated empirical political science research on topics like political regimes, democratization and democratic survival. This paper develops the concept of egalitarian democracy as a regime that provides de facto protection of rights and freedoms equally across the population, distributes resources in a way that enables meaningful political participation for all citizens and fosters an environment in which all individuals and social groups can influence political and governing processes. Using new indicators from the Varieties of Democracy project, the paper develops and presents measures of these important concepts, demonstrates their relationship to existing measures, and illustrates their utility for advancing the study of democracy in ways that more fully embrace the richness of democratic theory.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 595 - 612
Copyright
© The European Political Science Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Rachel Sigman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA 93943 ([email protected]). Staffan I. Lindberg is the Professor of Political Science and Director of the V-Dem Institute, Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Box 711, SE405 30 Gothenburg ([email protected]). The authors thank Jan Teorell for guidance and Yiting Wang for technical assistance. Helpful comments were provided by Amy Alexander and other participants in the May 2016 V-Dem Conference, and two anonymous reviewers. The authors also thank V-Dem team members for their earlier work on both the conceptualization and construction of the egalitarian indices. The authors are solely responsible for any mistakes. This research project was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Grant M13-0559:1, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; by Swedish Research Council, PI: Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden and Jan Teorell, Department of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden; and by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to Wallenberg Academy Fellow Staffan I. Lindberg, V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; as well as by internal grants from the Vice-Chancellor’s office, the Dean of the College of Social Sciences, and the Department of Political Science at University of Gothenburg. To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2018.6

References

Acemoglu, Daron, and Robinson, James A.. 2006. Economic Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Adcock, Robert, and Collier, David. 2001. ‘Measurement validity: A shared standard for qualitative and quantitative research’. The American Political Science Review 95(3):529–546.Google Scholar
Ake, Claude. 2000. The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa. Dakar: African Books Collective.Google Scholar
Anderson, Christopher, and Barimendi, Pablo. 2008. ‘Income Inequality and Democratic Representation’. In David Anderson and Pablo Barimendi (eds), Democracy, Inequality, and Representation in Comparative Perspective, Chapter 1, 3–24.Google Scholar
Ansell, Ben, and Samuels, David. 2015. Inequality and Democratic Survival. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Beetham, David. 1999. Democracy and Human Rights. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Berman, Sheri. 2006. The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Eduard. 1961. Evolutionary Socialism. New York, NY: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Boix, Carles. 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bollen, Kenneth A, and Jackman, Robert W.. 1989. ‘Democracy, Stability, and Dichotomies’. American Sociological Review 54(4):612–621.Google Scholar
Brennan, Jason. 2016. Against Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Elizabeth F. 2009. Semi-Citizenship in Democratic Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Collier, David, and Adcock, Robert. 1999. ‘Democracy and Dichotomies: A Pragmatic Approach to Choices About Concepts’. Annual Review of Political Science 2:537–565.Google Scholar
Collier, David, and Levitsky, Steven. 1997. ‘Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research’. World Politics 49(3):430–451.Google Scholar
Coppedge, Michael, Gerring, John, Lindberg, Staffan I., Pemstein, Daniel, Skaaning, Svend-Erik, Teorell, Jan, Andersson, Frida, Marquardt, Kyle L., Mechkova, Valeriya, Miri, Farhad, Pemstein, Daniel, Stepanova, Natalia, Tzelgov, Eitan, and Wang, Yi ting. 2016a. ‘Varieties of Democracy: Methodology (Version 6)’. V-Dem Institute, Gothenburg. Available at https://www.v-dem.net/files/42/Methodology%20v6.pdf, accessed 30 November 2016.Google Scholar
Coppedge, Michael, Gerring, John, Lindberg, Staffan I., Skaaning, Svend-Erik, Teorell, Jan, Altman, David, Andersson, Frida, Bernhard, Michael, Fish, M. Steven, Glynn, Adam, Hicken, Allen, Knutsen, Carl Henrik, Marquardt, Kyle L., McMann, Kelly, Mechkova, Valeriya, Miri, Farhad, Paxton, Pamela, Pernes, Josefine, Pemstein, Daniel, Staton, Jeffrey, Stepanova, Natalia, Tzelgov, Eitan, Wang, Yi ting, and Zimmerman, Brigitte. 2016b. ‘V-dem [Country-Year/Country-Date] Dataset v6’. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project, Gothenburg. Available at https://www.v-dem.net/en/data/data-version-6-2/, accessed 30 November 2016.Google Scholar
Coppedge, Michael, Gerring, John, Lindberg, Staffan I., Skaaning, Svend-Erik, Teorell, Jan, Altman, David, Bernhard, Michael, Fish, M. Steven, Glynn, Adam, Hicken, Allen, Knutsen, Carl Henrik, McMann, Kelly, Paxton, Pamela, Pemstein, Daniel, Staton, Jeffrey, Sigman, Rachel, Zimmerman, Brigitte, Andersson, Frida, and Valeriya Mechkova, A. Farhad Miri. 2016c. ‘V-dem Codebook v6’. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project, Gothenburg. Available at https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/d1/24/d124efd5-7ff5-4175-a1ed-f294984084d0/v-dem_codebook_v6.pdf, accessed 30 November 2016.Google Scholar
Coppedge, Michael, Lindberg, Staffan, Skaaning, Svend-Erik, and Teorell, Jan. 2016d. ‘Measuring High Level Democratic Principles Using the v-Dem Data’. International Political Science Review 37(5):580–593.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert. 1971. Polyarchy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert Alan. 1989. Democracy and its Critics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. 1996. ‘Equality versus inequality’. PS: Political Science & Politics 29(4):639–648.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert Alan. 2006. On Political Equality. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 2004 [1916]. Democracy and Education. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1987. ‘What is Equality-Part 4: Political Equality’. University of San Francisco Law Review 22:1–30.Google Scholar
Foa, Roberto Stefan, and Mounk, Yascha. 2016. ‘The Danger of Democratic Deconsolidation: The Democratic Disconnect’. Journal of Democracy 27:5–17.Google Scholar
Gerring, John. 2011. Social Science Methodology: A Unified Framework. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lijphart, Arend. 1999. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Democracies. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Lindberg, Staffan I., Coppedge, Michael, Gerring, John, and Teorell, Jan. 2014. ‘V-Dem: A New Way to Measure Democracy’. Journal of Democracy 25(3):159–169.Google Scholar
Lindstadt, Rene, Proksch, Sven-Oliver, and Slapin, Jonathan B. 2015. ‘Assessing the Measurement of Policy Positions in Expert Surveys’. Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, September 3–6, 2015.Google Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1959. ‘Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy’. American Political Science Review 53(1):69–105.Google Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1981. Political Man (Expanded Edition). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 2016 [1689]. Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mansbridge, Jane J. 1983. Beyond Adversary Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Marshall, Monty G, and Jaggers, Keith. 2015. ‘Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2015, Center for Systemic Peace. Available at http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/p4manualv2016.pdf, accessed 30 November 2016.Google Scholar
Martin, Andrew D, Quinn, Kevin M., and Park, Jong Hee. 2016. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) Package Version 1.3–7. Available at https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/MCMCpack/MCMCpack.pdf, accessed 30 November 2016.Google Scholar
Martinez i Coma, Ferran, and Ham, Carolien Van. 2015. ‘Can experts judge elections? Testing the Validity of Expert Judgments for Measuring Election Integrity’. European Journal of Political Research 54(2):305–325.Google Scholar
McMann, Kelly M., Pemstein, Daniel, Seim, Brigitte, Teorell, Jan, and Lindberg, Staffan I.. 2016. ‘Strategies of Validation: Assessing the Varieties of Democracy Corruption Data’. V-Dem Working Paper 23, Gothenburg. Available at https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/41776/4/gupea_2077_41776_4.pdf.Google Scholar
Miller, David, and Walzer, Michael. 1995. Pluralism, Justice, and Equality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Munck, Gerardo L., and Verkuilen, Jay. 2002. ‘Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy Evaluating Alternative Indices’. Comparative Political Studies 35(1):5–34.Google Scholar
O’Donell, Guillermo A. 1994. ‘Delegative democracy’. Journal of Democracy 5(1):55–69.Google Scholar
Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Pemstein, Daniel, Marquardt, Kyle L., Tzelgov, Eitan, Wang, Yi ting, and Miri, Farhad. 2016. ‘The v-Dem Measurement Model: Latent Variable Analysis for Cross-National and Cross-Temporal Expert-Coded Data’. V-Dem Institute Working Paper Series, Gothenburg. Available at https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/41776/4/gupea_2077_41776_4.pdf, accessed 30 November 2016.Google Scholar
Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 2004. ‘Representation and Democracy: Uneasy Alliance’. Scandinavian Political Studies 27(3):335–342.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 2005. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1920. The Social Contract: & Discourses. Number 660. London: JM Dent & Sons Limited.Google Scholar
Saward, Michael. 1998. The Terms of Democracy. New York: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1977. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Seawright, Jason, and Collier, David. 2014. ‘Rival Strategies of Validation Tools for Evaluating Measures of Democracy’. Comparative Political Studies 47(1):111–138.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 2001. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sinclair, Thomas Alan. 1962. Aristotle the Politics. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Steenbergen, Marco R, and Marks, Gary. 2007. ‘Evaluating Expert Judgments’. European Journal of Political Research 46(3):347–366.Google Scholar
Stokes, Susan C, Dunning, Thad, Nazareno, Marcelo, and Brusco, Valeria. 2013. Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Teorell, Jan, Coppedge, Michael, Skaaning, Svend-Erik, and Lindberg, Staffan I.. 2016. ‘Measuring Electoral Democracy with V-Dem Data: Introducing a New Polyarchy Index’. V-Dem Working Paper 25, Gothenburg. Available at https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/41776/4/gupea_2077_41776_4.pdf, accessed 30 November 2016.Google Scholar
Uslaner, Eric M., and Brown, Mitchell. 2005. ‘Inequality, Trust, and Civic Engagement’. American Politics Research 33(6):868–894.Google Scholar
Varieties of Democracy Institute. 2016. Structure of V-Dem Indices, Components and Indicators, Version 6. Available at https://www.v-dem.net/files/42/Structure%20of%20Aggregations%20v6.pdf, accessed 30 November 2016.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Zakaria, Fareed. 1997. ‘The Rise of Illiberal Democracy’. Foreign Affairs 76(6):22–43.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Sigman and Lindberg supplementary material

Dataset

http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/Q0ROYU
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Sigman and Lindberg supplementary material

Sigman and Lindberg supplementary material 1

Download Sigman and Lindberg supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 211.1 KB