IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/qualqt/v47y2013i6p3457-3471.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How to measure polyarchy with Freedom House: a proposal for revision

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Denk

Abstract

In studies on democracy and democratization, the Freedom House Index (FHI) is frequently used to measure the concept of polyarchy. This approach creates an often noticed discrepancy between the conceptual and measurement levels. The concept of polyarchy is regarded as a minimalist definition of democracy, which mainly refers to the procedural aspects of political systems, while FHI indicates a maximalist definition of democracy. This article presents a proposal to improve the conceptual validity when FHI is used to measure the concept of polyarchy. The proposal suggests that the FHI is adjusted in two aspects. First, some sub-categories within the FHI are excluded based on their lack of relevance for the concept of polyarchy. Second, the principle of aggregation is changed from simple arithmetic addition to multiplication, which corresponds to the idea that all democratic institutions, according to the concept of polyarchy, are necessary for the democratic system. These two suggestions create a revisited index that is based on the FHI. As illustrated with empirical analyses, the revisited index provides a quite different view of democratization at the global and state levels. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Denk, 2013. "How to measure polyarchy with Freedom House: a proposal for revision," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 47(6), pages 3457-3471, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:qualqt:v:47:y:2013:i:6:p:3457-3471
    DOI: 10.1007/s11135-012-9732-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11135-012-9732-1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11135-012-9732-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sartori, Giovanni, 1970. "Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 64(4), pages 1033-1053, December.
    2. Høyland, Bjørn & Moene, Karl & Willumsen, Fredrik, 2012. "The tyranny of international index rankings," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 1-14.
    3. David A Armstrong II, 2011. "Stability and change in the Freedom House political rights and civil liberties measures," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 48(5), pages 653-662, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mariateresa Ciommi & Chiara Gigliarano & Francesco M. Chelli & Mauro Gallegati, 2022. "It is the Total that Does [Not] Make the Sum: Nature, Economy and Society in the Equitable and Sustainable Well-Being of the Italian Provinces," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 161(2), pages 491-522, June.
    2. Xinyu Zhang & Yue Liao, 2023. "A Bibliometric and Visual Analysis of Populism Research (2000–2020)," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, December.
    3. Gustav Lidén, 2013. "What about theory? The consequences on a widened perspective of social theory," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 47(1), pages 213-225, January.
    4. Chris Tofallis, 2013. "An automatic-democratic approach to weight setting for the new human development index," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(4), pages 1325-1345, October.
    5. Peters, Ina, 2014. "Too Abstract to Be Feasible? Applying the Grounded Theory Method in Social Movement Research," GIGA Working Papers 247, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    6. Pursey Heugens & J. Oosterhout & Muel Kaptein, 2006. "Foundations and Applications for Contractualist Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 68(3), pages 211-228, October.
    7. Xiaohong Yu & Zhaoyang Sun, 2022. "The company they keep: When and why Chinese judges engage in collegiality," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(4), pages 936-1002, December.
    8. Suman Seth & Mark McGillivray, 2018. "Composite indices, alternative weights, and comparison robustness," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 51(4), pages 657-679, December.
    9. Liesbet Hooghe & Gary Marks, 2015. "Delegation and pooling in international organizations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 305-328, September.
    10. Desbordes, Rodolphe & Koop, Gary, 2016. "Should we care about the uncertainty around measures of political-economic development?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 752-763.
    11. Graeme Auld & Stefan Renckens, 2017. "Rule-Making Feedbacks through Intermediation and Evaluation in Transnational Private Governance," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 670(1), pages 93-111, March.
    12. Mathieu Rousselin, 2012. "The EU as a Multilateral Rule Exporter - The Global Transfer of European Rules via International Organizations," KFG Working Papers p0048, Free University Berlin.
    13. Jessica F Green, 2017. "Policy entrepreneurship in climate governance: Toward a comparative approach," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 35(8), pages 1471-1482, December.
    14. Ludger Niemann & Thomas Hoppe, 2021. "How to Sustain Sustainability Monitoring in Cities: Lessons from 49 Community Indicator Initiatives across 10 Latin American Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-16, May.
    15. Stephen Morse, 2013. "Bottom Rail on Top: The Shifting Sands of Sustainable Development Indicators as Tools to Assess Progress," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(6), pages 1-21, May.
    16. Louise Tillin, 2013. "National and Subnational Comparative Politics: Why, What and How," Studies in Indian Politics, , vol. 1(2), pages 235-240, December.
    17. Kaminski Joseph Jon, 2019. "Rethinking Realism and Constructivism Through the Lenses of Themes and Ontological Primacy," Croatian International Relations Review, Sciendo, vol. 25(85), pages 6-29, November.
    18. Mueller, Klaus, 1997. "East European studies, neo-totalitarianism and social science theory," Discussion Papers, Presidential Department P 97-004, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    19. Gutiérrez Sanín, Francisco, 2009. "The quandaries of coding and ranking: evaluating poor state performance indexes," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 28483, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    20. Riccardo Pelizzo, 2018. "Democracy and Governance," Research Africa Network Working Papers 18/004, Research Africa Network (RAN).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:qualqt:v:47:y:2013:i:6:p:3457-3471. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.