Democracy is a widely used concept that has been evaluated for long periods of time. Different indices measure what every one of them calls democracy and claim to see a decline in democracy around the world but whether there is a decline or not is disputable.
This study aims to examine the methodology of three different, widely used democracy indices to see how their definition of democracy varies between them and how that affects the democratic value of different countries around the world. To do this, a qualitative content analysis has been used to learn more about the indicators each index claims to be a democracy measure as well as a case study to deep dive in to five different countries with the most difference in democracy score between the indices democracy levels.
The study’s findings show that the indices differ in the way they use the term democracy which affects the empirical democracy score for countries.
2024-05-29