Projects

• The Referendum Database (RDB, since 2022), a database with information on direct democracy institutions such as referendum and initiative, or of those of representative democracies, authoritarian or totaliarian regimes such as plebiscites (referendums from above),^[20] as well as their use in popular votes^[21][22] with Varieties of Referendums (V-Ref, integrity of referendums, indicators for measuring their quality, a 2026–2029 project financed by SNF and DFG) of the Centre for Research on Direct Democracy (c2d / C2D)^[22] at the Centre for Democracy Aarau (ZDA).

One of their main reports^[23] already published is The World of Referendums (WoR), Yearly Referendum Database (RDB) report series.^[20][24]

RDB is a further development of the c2d database^[22] of the Centre for Research on Direct Democracy (c2d) founded 1993 by Andreas Auer at the University of Geneva (in 2007 Auer also co-founded the ZDA in Aarau and moved the c2d there).^[25][24]

• The Democracy Barometer,^[26] of the Centre for Democracy Aarau (ZDA) and the Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich, measures the quality of (so far) some of the established democracies with comparative data on the principles of "freedom" ("individual liberties", "rule of law", "public sphere"), "control" ("competition", "mutual constraints", "governmental capability"), "equality" ("transparency", "participation", "representation"), lists the indicators used to calculate these principles and produces Country reports and additional materials (codebook, methodology).

Indices measuring aspects of democracy

• The Effective Number of Parties is an index of the adjusted number of political parties in a country's party system.^[27]
• The Electoral Integrity Project surveys academics on the perceived electoral integrity of countries and subnational entities

Fragile States Index 2005–2013

• The Fragile States Index, formerly the Failed States Index, is an annual report that aims to assess states' vulnerability to conflict or collapse, ranking all sovereign states with membership in the United Nations where there is enough data available for analysis.^[28]
• The Gallagher index measures an electoral system's relative disproportionality between votes received and seats in a legislature.^[29]
• The Pedersen index is a measure of political volatility in party systems.
• The government distance measures the substantive political representation congruence as the political distance between the government and the median voter.^[30]

Other measured aspects of democracy include voter turnout, efficiency gap, wasted vote, and political efficacy.^[31][32]

Historical

Democracy-Dictatorship Index in 2008^[33]

• The Democracy-Dictatorship Index was a binary measure of democracy and dictatorship.^[34]
• The Democracy Ranking was a democracy ranking by the Association for Development and Advancement of the Democracy Award.^[35]
• The Polity data series contains annual information on regime authority characteristics and covers the years 1800–2018 based on competitiveness, openness, and level of participation, sponsored by the Political Instability Task Force (PITF).^[36]
• Boix-Miller-Rosato dichotomous coding of democracy, easy-to-observe characteristics, few evaluations by own researchers based on academic literature. As a classification: non-democracy to democracy.^[37]
• Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy (LIED) by Skaaning et al. democracy's characteristics assessed with easy-to-observe characteristics, few evaluations by own researchers based on academic research, and evaluating whether necessary characteristics are present.^[38]
• The Index of Democratization created by Tatu Vanhanen.

Difficulties in measuring democracy

Democracy is a multifaceted concept encompassing the functioning of diverse institutions, many of which are challenging to measure. As a result, limitations arise in quantifying and econometrically analyzing democracy's potential effects or its relationships with other phenomena, such as inequality, poverty, and education. etc.^[39] Given the challenges of obtaining reliable data on within-country variations in aspects of democracy, much of the academic focus has been on cross-country comparisons. However, significant variations in democratic institutions can exist within individual countries, highlighting the limitations of such an approach.

Another dimension of the difficulty in measuring democracy lies in the ongoing debate between minimalist and maximalist definitions of democracy. A minimalist conception of democracy defines democracy by primarily considering the essence of democracy; such as electoral procedures.^[40] A maximalist definition of democracy can include outcomes, such as economic or administrative efficiency, into measures of democracy.^[41] Some aspects of democracy, such as responsiveness^[42] or accountability, are generally not included in democracy indices / rankings due to the difficulty measuring these aspects. Other aspects, such as judicial independence or quality of the electoral system, are included in some democracy indices / rankings but not in others.

Some measures of democracy, such as Freedom House and Polity IV, adopt a maximalist understanding of democracy by analyzing indicators that extend beyond mere electoral procedures. These measures aim to capture broader dimensions of democratic governance, reflecting a more comprehensive view of political systems.^[43] These measures attempt to gauge contestation and inclusion; two features Robert Dahl argued are essential in democracies that successfully promote accountable governments.^[44][45] The democratic rating given by these mainstream measures can vary greatly depending on the indicators and evidence they deploy.^[46] The definition of democracy utilized by these measures is important because of the discouraging and alienating power such ratings can have, particularly when determined by indicators which are biased toward Western democracies.^[47]

Dieter Fuchs and Edeltraud Roller argue that accurately measuring the quality of democracy requires complementing objective metrics with subjective measurements that reflect the perspectives and experiences of citizens.^[48] Similarly, Quinton Mayne and Brigitte Geißel also defend that the quality of democracy does not depend exclusively on the performance of institutions, but also on the citizens' own dispositions and commitment.^[49]

Critiques of measures of democracy

Data on democracy, and particularly global indices of democracy, and the data they rely on, have been the subject of scrutiny and criticized by various scholars. Gerardo L. Munck and Jay Verkuilen for instance, have raised concerns about the methods used by prominent democracy indices / rankings such as Freedom House and Polity, such as the concept of democracy they measured, the design of indicators, and the aggregation rule.^[50] Political scientists Andrew T. Little and Anne Meng "highlight measurement concerns regarding time-varying bias in expert-coded data" such as Freedom House and V-Dem and encourage improving expert-coding practices.^[51] Knutsen et al.^[52] did not see evidence for time-varying bias in their expert-coded data and note the application of item response theory, factor analysis and estimates of uncertainties to limit expert biases while discussing concerns in operationalization of observer-invariant measures of democracy.

Conceptualizing and measuring democracy

In 2011, Michael Coppedge, John Gerring et al. proposed an approach to such conceptualization and measurement. In their paper Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: A New Approach^[55] they review some of the weaknesses among contemporary and older approaches, then lay out their approach, characterizing it as historical, multidimensional, disaggregated, and transparent.

The authors propose to create a new set of indicators, four features, considered together, to conceptualize and measure democracy. First, historical, extending indicators of democracy back through modern history, wherever possible. Second, a multidimensional approach to the problem of conceptualizing democracy. Third, to collect information relevant to democracy at a highly disaggregated level. Fourth, transparent, a strategy for data collection and presentation that should enhance the precision, validity, transparency, and legitimacy of the resulting indicators.

They also sum up the conceptions – and/or (rather) aspects^[57] – of democracy into six – electoral, liberal, majoritarian, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian, which taken together offer a fairly comprehensive accounting of the concept of democracy as it is employed today (see overview in the table below).

In the conclusion they review some of the payoffs such an approach might bring to the study – and possibly development^[57] – of democracy.