Michael Coppedge

Diffusion Is No Illusion Neighbor Emulation in the Third Wave of Democracy

This article develops and tests a specific model of the role of diffusion as a determinant of the magnitude and direction of regime change, using a database covering the world from 1972 to 1996. The authors find that countries tend to change their regimes to match the average degree of democracy or nondemocracy found among their contiguous neighbors and that countries in the U.S. sphere of influence tended to become more democratic in the period examined. They also confirm that countries tend to follow the direction in which the majority of other countries in the world are moving. Their model builds on several findings in the diffusion literature but adds methodological improvements and includes more extensive controls for other variables that have been found to affect regime change—including levels of development, presidentialism, and regional differences—offering further support for some and challenging other findings of the regime change literature.

Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: A New Approach

InthewakeoftheColdWar,democracyhasgainedthestatusofamantra.Yetthereisnoconsensusabouthowtoconceptualizeand measure regimes such that meaningful comparisons can be made through time and across countries. In this prescriptive article, we argueforanewapproachtoconceptualizationandmeasurement.Wefirstreviewsomeoftheweaknessesamongtraditionalapproaches. Wethenlayoutourapproach,whichmaybecharacterizedas historical, multidimensional, disaggregated,and transparent.Weendby reviewing some of the payoffs such an approach might bring to the study of democracy.

Strong Parties and Lame Ducks: Presidential Partyarchy and Factionalism in Venezuela.

This bold and comprehensive reassessment of democracy in Venezuela explains why one of the oldest and most admired democracies in Latin America became fragile after more than three decades of apparent stability.

Two Persistent Dimensions of Democracy: Contestation and Inclusiveness

Because democracy is central to much comparative and international political research, it is crucial for political scientists to measure it validly. We challenge the common assumption that most existing indicators of democracy measure the same single dimension. We present 11 different streams of evidence to show that about three-quarters of what Polity, Freedom House, and other indicators of democracy have been measuring consists of variation on the two dimensions of democracy that Robert Dahl proposed in Polyarchy—contestation and inclusiveness. These two dimensions were consistently fundamental to the most commonly used indicators of democracy from 1950 to 2000. Our analysis produces new indicators of contestations and inclusiveness for most countries from 1950 to 2000.

District Magnitude, Economic Performance, and Party-System Fragmentation in Five Latin American Countries:

This article makes a fresh start in the attempt to explain the number of parties in party systems. It develops a simultaneous equations model to differentiate between the psychological and mechanical effects of district magnitude on party-system fragmentation. Both effects are statistically significant and approximately equal. However, neither effect is very large in comparison to underlying patterns of politicization, which are argued to be reflections of the number of political cleavages in society. These cleavages predispose each party system to converge toward a country-specific effective number of parties within 5 elections, regardless of the initial level of fragmentation, barring outside disturbances. Major devaluations may act as such disturbances, but the evidence so far is inconclusive. The analysis is based on new data from 62 elections in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela, supplemented by 30+ additional elections in Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Uruguay for the exploration of economic impacts.

Democracy and Dimensions Comments on Munck and Verkuilen

Democracy is probably the most complex concept in political science. It has not been and may never be measured in all its many-faceted, multidimensional glory. Munck and Verkuilen, however, lay the groundwork for improved measurement by defining excellent standards for measuring democracy well and using these standards to evaluate a comprehensive set of indicators. Their analysis suggests that we should be less trusting of the indicators we have, which tend to be simplistic, opaque, vulnerable to bias, and haphazardly related to theory, especially when they apply to an extensive range of countries and years. Although their analysis does not solidly confirm their worst suspicions, Munck and Verkuilen make a persuasive case that the worst suspicions cannot be disconfirmed either. They then make many constructive suggestions for measuring democracy more validly and reliably. Almost all of their suggestions, if implemented, would improve the next generation of democracy indicators, but some of their suggestions would lead to more dramatic improvement than others. The three suggestions with the greatest potential are those that address the central challenge of measuring democracy: measuring it in multiple dimensions. These are Munck and Verkuilen’s calls to strike a balance between minimalist and maximalist definitions of democracy, choose an appropriate level of measurement, and aggregate components validly. Munck and Verkuilen correctly observe that almost all democracy indicators aim to operationalize a minimalist concept of democracy, which tends to be purely institutional and procedural, corresponding roughly to the definition of polyarchy (Dahl, 1989, pp. 218-224). Reducing democracy to polyarchy was a very useful and productive step 30 years ago: The complexity of democracy fomented controversy and paralysis for those beginning to

V-Dem: A New Way to Measure Democracy

In the last few decades, Western governments have spent huge sums of money to promote democracy abroad. We do not know which, if any, of these programs actually work. If we cannot measure democracy in sufficient detail and with the necessary nuance, we cannot mark its progress and setbacks or affect its future course. While distinguishing the most democratic countries from the least democratic ones is fairly easy, it has proven to be much harder to make finer distinctions. Here we present a new effort aimed at measuring democracy, the Varieties of Democracy Project (V-Dem).

Measuring High Level Democratic Principles Using the V-Dem Data

While the definition of extended conceptions of democracy has been widely discussed, the measurement of these constructs has not attracted similar attention. In this article we present new measures of polyarchy, liberal democracy, deliberative democracy, egalitarian democracy, and participatory democracy that cover most polities in the period 1900 to 2013. These indices are based on data from a large number of indicators collected through the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project. We present and discuss the theoretical considerations and the concrete formula underlying the aggregation of indicators and components into high level measures of democracy. In addition, we show how these measures reflect variations in quality of democracy, given the respective ideals, in 2012. In the conclusion scholars are encouraged to make use of the rich dataset made available by V-Dem.

Prospects for Democratic Governability in Venezuela

V ENEZUELA, once the most governable democracy in Latin America, is now a very fragile democracy. This article describes the formula that made Venezuela governable in the 1970s, traces its development in the 1960s, and explains why it broke down in the 1980s, leaving the democratic regime in danger in the 1990s. This historical perspective is necessary for anyone seeking to understand the prospects for democratic governability in the Caldera government, for this administration will be expected to provide an alternative to the old formula. At the same time, it will be judged by comparison with the achievements of the old formula. If Calderas democratic alternative is judged a failure, many Venezuelans will be inclined to give the nondemocractic alternative a second look. The historical perspective is also useful in deriving lessons that can be applied to other Latin American democracies. First, because Venezuelas formula worked well for a while, it helps to identify the elements of democratic governability. Second, the crisis of governability yields insights into the strengths and weaknesses of a formula that is often held up as a model for other countries. And finally, only the long-term view can provide an appreciation of the challenges posed to any formula faced with a dynamic social and economic context. Even formulas for governability that have proved successful in the

V-Dem Codebook V6

All variables that V-Dem is compiling are included in the Codebook.