Does the Choice of Democracy Measure Matter?: Comparisons between the Two Leading Democracy Indices, Freedom House and Polity IV

• Autores: John Högström
• Localización: Government and opposition: An international journal of comparative politics, ISSN 0017-257X, Nº. 2, 2013, págs. 201-221
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article investigates whether two different measures of democracy generate the same empirical results. The Freedom House and Polity IV measures are used as the dependent variables. The result shows that statistical significance and explanatory power for different independent variables differ greatly, depending on which democracy index is used as the dependent variable. The results also indicate that Freedom House and Polity IV rate many countries’ levels of democracy differently. It is worrying and problematic for comparative studies of democracy that empirical results differ so much according to which measure of democracy is used.