Polity data series

The Polity data series is a widely used data series in political science research.[1] The latest version, Polity IV, contains coded annual information on regime authority characteristics and transitions for all independent states with greater than 500,000 total population and covers the years 1800–2006. Polity's conclusions about a state's level of democracy are based on an evaluation of that state's elections for competitiveness, openness and level of participation.

The 2002 paper "Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy" claimed several problems with commonly used democracy rankings, including Polity, opining that the criteria used to determine "democracy" were misleadingly narrow.[2][3]

See also

References

  1. ^ Casper, Gretchen, and Claudiu Tufis. 2003. “Correlation Versus Interchangeability: the Limited Robustness of Empirical Finding on Democracy Using Highly Correlated Data Sets.” Political Analysis 11: 196-203.
  2. ^ Gerardo L. Munck, Jay Verkuilen (Vol. 35 No. 1, February 2002 5-34), "Abstract: Conceptualizing and measuring democracy", Comparative Political Studies (Sage Publications), http://cps.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/1/5, "... comprehensive and integrated framework for the analysis of data is offered and used to assess data sets on democracy ..." 
  3. ^ Gerardo L. Munck, Jay Verkuilen (Vol. 35 No. 1, February 2002 5-34), "Conceptualizing and measuring democracy: Evaluating Alternative Indices", Comparative Political Studies (Sage Publications), http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~munck/pdf/Munck_Verkuilen%20CPS%202002.pdf, "... it identifies a pair of attributes (competitiveness and regulation of participation) that grasp only one aspect of democracy, the extent to which elections are competitive, and another pair of attributes (competitiveness and openness of executive recruitment) that also pertain to a single issue, whether offices are filled by means of elections or some other procedure ..." 

External links