Seminar: External in the European context Prof. Timm Beichelt MA European Studies Presentation: Katarzyna Goebel

Session: Where to – concepts of and its measurement

1. The term ‘democracy’ • Demos (people) and kratos (rule) from Greek means ‘rule by the people’. • Aristotle- contrasting rule by many with rule by the few and rule by single person. • Lincoln- ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people. • ‘Rule of the people’- equality, sovereignty/control, inclusiveness.

2. Equality is the citizens opportunities: • To formulate their preferences • To signify their preferences • To have their preferences weighed equally in the conduct of the government

3. Dahl`s seven institutions of democracy • Elected officials • Free and fair • Inclusive suffrage • Right to run for office • Freedom of expression • Alternative information • Associational autonomy

4. Public contestation and participation 4.1.Two theoretical dimensions The regimes vary in: • the extent of permissible opposition, public contestation, or political competition • the proportion of people enable to participate in public contestation 4.2. – democratized regime or a regime that has been substantially popularized and liberalized, that is, highly inclusive and extensively open to public contestation

5. Measuring democracy 5.1. The prepares two indices every year: one on political rights and one on . The countries are separated into three groups: free, partly free, not free. 5.2. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s bases on five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, political culture. It places countries into four types: full , flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, authoritarian regimes.

6. Hypotheses Democracy is an abstract term and cannot be fully defined, as well as measured. Nevertheless some tries to do so are important in order to determine and call some states as democratic while others as non-democratic and to have an overall view of the process of democratization. The measurements are tools to develop the term ‘democracy’ itself, to define requirements for democracy to occur and give guidelines what the states should improve in order to become ‘full democracies’.

Literature:

Campbell D.F.J., The Basic Concept for the Democracy Ranking of the Quality of Democracy, Vienna, September 29, 2008. Dahl R., Democracy and its Critics, New Haven/ London, 1989, chapters 15-22. Dahl R., Polyarchy. Participation and Opposition, New Haven/ London, 1972, pp. 1-16, 202- 206. Held D., Models of Democracy, Cambridge 2006. Principles of democracy, http://www.streetlaw.org/democlesson.html, [18.10.2010]. Saward M., Democratic Theory and Indices of Democratization, (in:) Defining and Measuring Democracy, edt. Beetham D., London 1994, pp. 6-24. www. freedomhouse.org www.economist.com