Demokratiebarometer

Quality of Democracy – Democracy Barometer for Established Democracies

Institut, Hochschule

Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Universität Zürich; Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB)

Mitarbeitende

Sibylle Hardmeier, Wolfgang Merkel

Trägerschaft

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds: National Centre for Competence in Research NCCR "Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century“

Laufzeit

Herbst 2005−Herbst 2009

Projektbeschrieb

Der Demokratiebarometer evaluiert die Qualität der Demokratie in OECD-MItgliedstaaten und legt Verbesserungsmöglichkeiten dar.

This project develops an instrument for measuring the quality of democracy in advanced industrialized countries (OECD member states). Measuring democracy has a long tradition in political science. However, the reliability of existing indices has been challenged on several counts:

• First, they fail to conceptualize democratization as an open-ended process and neglect to consider that no country can claim to be perfectly democratic. They fail to consider that established democracies are as much in need of critical assessment as unconsolidated ones.
• Moreover, these indices’ exclusive focus on nation-states seems inappropriate, particularly in the context of globalization.
• Criticism by political scientists also encompasses methodological issues of reliability, validity and dimensionality.

In order to remedy these deficits and to develop an accurate index of democracy, the NCCR democracy barometer will:

• generate more variation among advanced industrial societies by combining qualitative and quantitative methods, accounting for the broad range of concrete forms and stages of democratic development, and by taking outcomes into account;
• take globalization and glocalization into account and develop strategies of disaggregation and reaggregation;
• take the criticism of the cultural relativism of democracy seriously by focusing on advanced industrialized societies and reflecting on the possibility of culturally determined varieties of democracy.
• take the criticism of the cultural relativism of democracy seriously by focusing on advanced industrialized societies and reflecting on the possibility of culturally determined varieties of democracy.

The findings and data of the democracy barometer will benefit researchers in a variety of areas but it will also be useful for practitioners ranging from political actors to interest and non-governmental organizations. It allows for benchmarking with other democracies and a critical observation of democratic development over time – a task which has become more pressing for established democracies since 9/11, when the fight against terrorism suddenly took precedence over basic democratic guarantees, especially civil rights.

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