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).
About the Authors
Staffan I. Lindberg
Staffan I. Lindbergis professor of political science and director of the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg.
Staffan Lindberg replies to Matthijs Bogaards’s critique, finding the latter’s methodology problematic and arguing that the evidence for association between repeated elections and democratization remains strong.
Often called for but seldom defined with any precision, “non-Western democracy” could end up giving cover to authoritarianism, but also could allow potentially useful democratic innovations to be tried and…