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Democracy Indices and Their State of Development with a Special Focus on the Varieties of Democracy Project
Abstract
For many years, democracy indices help scientists to classify political regimes all over the world. But does democracy indices measure the quality of democracy in an adequate way? Based on the literature review, an improvement in methodology of democracy indices can be observed since the end of the 20th century as an answer to the previous shortcomings. The author of the article describes development of democracy indices since the very first attempts to measure Robert Dahl’s poliarchy from the 1990s, concepts of Svetoslava Andreeva, the Democracy Barometer project, focusing on the principles of the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project. The analysis of democracy indices is made from the new institutionalism perspective, along with an attempt to indicate how different indices measure democracy. New ways of democracy indices development in the future have been suggested, including the impact of third countries and ICT technologies In the summary, the main aspects of the V-Dem project methodology have been indicated that distinguish it from other democracy indices. What is more, the V-Dem project has been indicated as a project that measures democracy in the most comprehensive way.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/k.2022.29.1.21-40
Date of publication: 2022-09-13 11:18:41
Date of submission: 2022-01-16 15:29:19
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