TY  - GEN
A1  - Giebler, Heiko
A1  - Ruth, Saskia P.
A1  - Tanneberg, Dag
T1  - Why choice matters
BT  - revisiting and comparing measures of democracy
T2  - Politics and Governance
N2  - Measures of democracy are in high demand. Scientific and public audiences use them to describe political realities and to substantiate causal claims about those realities. This introduction to the thematic issue reviews the history of democracy measurement since the 1950s. It identifies four development phases of the field, which are characterized by three recurrent topics of debate: (1) what is democracy, (2) what is a good measure of democracy, and (3) do our measurements of democracy register real-world developments? As the answers to those questions have been changing over time, the field of democracy measurement has adapted and reached higher levels of theoretical and methodological sophistication. In effect, the challenges facing contemporary social scientists are not only limited to the challenge of constructing a sound index of democracy. Today, they also need a profound understanding of the differences between various measures of democracy and their implications for empirical applications. The introduction outlines how the contributions to this thematic issue help scholars cope with the recurrent issues of conceptualization, measurement, and application, and concludes by identifying avenues for future research.
KW  - application
KW  - conceptualization
KW  - democracy
KW  - democratic quality
KW  - measurement
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v6i1.1428
SN  - 2183-2463
VL  - 6
IS  - 1
SP  - 1
EP  - 10
PB  - Cogitatio Press
CY  - Lisbon
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Giebler, Heiko
A1  - Ruth, Saskia P.
A1  - Tanneberg, Dag
T1  - Why choice matters
BT  - revisiting and comparing measures of democracy
T2  - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - Measures of democracy are in high demand. Scientific and public audiences use them to describe political realities and to substantiate causal claims about those realities. This introduction to the thematic issue reviews the history of democracy measurement since the 1950s. It identifies four development phases of the field, which are characterized by three recurrent topics of debate: (1) what is democracy, (2) what is a good measure of democracy, and (3) do our measurements of democracy register real-world developments? As the answers to those questions have been changing over time, the field of democracy measurement has adapted and reached higher levels of theoretical and methodological sophistication. In effect, the challenges facing contemporary social scientists are not only limited to the challenge of constructing a sound index of democracy. Today, they also need a profound understanding of the differences between various measures of democracy and their implications for empirical applications. The introduction outlines how the contributions to this thematic issue help scholars cope with the recurrent issues of conceptualization, measurement, and application, and concludes by identifying avenues for future research.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 104 
KW  - application
KW  - conceptualization
KW  - democracy
KW  - democratic quality
KW  - measurement
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-427891
SN  - 1867-5808
IS  - 104
ER  -