Democracy and Dictatorship: Conceptualization and Measurement 145

Democracy and Dictatorship: 5 Conceptualization and Measurement If you can think about something, you can conceptualize it; if you can conceptualize it, you can operationalize it; and if you can operationalize it, you can measure it. J. David Singer If you can not measure it, you can not improve it. Lord Kelvin Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. From a sign in Einstein’s office at Princeton • Although a strong consensus exists that democracy is the most desirable form of political regime, this has not always been the case. In fact, historically, democracy was commonly viewed as an obsolete system that was both dangerous and unstable. • Given the current widespread agreement concerning the importance OVERVIEW and desirability of democracy, one might wonder how a country becomes a democracy and about the sorts of things that influence democratic survival. Answering these types of questions presupposes that we can conceptualize and measure democracy and dictatorship. • In this chapter, we look at the types of issues that arise when social scientists try to conceptualize and measure abstract political phenomena. We do so in the context of democracy and dictatorship. What exactly is it that makes a democracy a democracy? Should we conceptualize and 144 Principles of Comparative Politics measure democracy in substantive or minimalist terms? Should we conceptualize and measure democracy and dictatorship as two separate categories or two ends of a single democratic-dictatorial continuum? • We also discuss different criteria—validity, reliability, and replicability—that political scientists employ to evaluate empirical measures of their theoretical concepts. We do so by examining three different measures of democracy and dictatorship commonly employed by comparative scholars. • Issues having to do with conceptualization and measurement are important, but often underemphasized, elements in the process by which social scientists test their theories. e live in a world in which there is now strong agreement concerning the importance and desirability of democracy. It is important to recognize, however, that this has historically Wnot always been the case. “For two millennia politicians and philosophers regarded democracy as an inferior form of politics” dominated by mob rule and class warfare (Hanson 1989, 70). As C. B. Macpherson (1966, 1) puts it, “Democracy used to be a bad word. Everybody who was anybody knew that democracy, in its original sense of rule by the people or government in accordance with the will of the bulk of the people, would be a bad thing— fatal to individual freedom and to all graces of civilized living. That was the position taken by pretty nearly all men of intelligence from the earliest historical times down to about a hundred years ago. Then, within fifty years, democracy became a good thing.” It is only relatively recently, then, that democracy has come to be considered a political system to be championed and exported around the world. It is for this reason that we begin this chapter by briefly examining how the meaning and appeal of democracy has changed over time. Given the consensus that now exists in favor of democracy, we might ask ourselves what causes democracy to emerge and survive. In the last chapter, we examined contractarian and predatory views of the state. We argued that the predatory view of the state had the potential to explain why some rulers share power or limit their extractive activity whereas others do not. Put differently, the predatory view of the state has the potential to explain why some states adopt democratic regimes but others adopt dictatorial ones. In the next two chapters, we take a closer look at this issue by analyzing economic and cultural explanations for the emergence and survival of democracy. Empirical tests of these arguments, however, presup- pose that we know a democracy when we see one. But is it obvious which countries are democracies and which are not? How do we know which ones are democracies? What makes a democracy a democracy and a dictatorship a dictatorship? In the second half of this chapter, we investigate how comparative politics scholars have tried to conceptualize and measure democratic and dictatorial regimes. Although we deliberately focus on democracy and dictatorship in this chapter, it is important to recognize that all political scientists interested in theory testing must ultimately wrestle with how best to conceptualize and measure whatever abstract political phenomena 5: Democracy and Dictatorship: Conceptualization and Measurement 145 they are examining. How should scholars conceptualize and measure representation, government performance, material well-being, societal development, culture, identity, accountabil- ity, and so on? The conceptualization and measurement issues that we raise here with respect to democracy and dictatorship apply equally well to these other types of political phenomena, many of which will be examined in subsequent chapters. Thinking about the issues that arise when scholars operationalize abstract political concepts is important because good measures are a prerequisite for good theory testing, a key part of the scientific process. DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE Democracy acquired a highly positive connotation during the second half of the twentieth century. Even countries widely considered dictatorships have professed their support for democracy and simply adjusted their definition of democracy so that the word could be applied to their form of regime (see Box 5.1). Indeed, many acknowledged dictatorships make reference to “people” or “democracy” in their very name—the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the People’s Republic of China— as if this would somehow make them democratic. As we will see in later chapters, these countries often go so far as to adopt seemingly democratic institutions such as elections, legislatures, and political parties. Still, until the middle of the nineteenth century, democracy was commonly viewed as an obsolete and ancient political system that was both dangerous and unstable. Of course, one reason for this view of democracy is that the debate concerning the appropriate form that regimes should take typically occurred among elites rather than the common people. The earliest debates surrounding the merits of different forms of regime, including democracy, can be dated to around 520 BC in Persia (Herodotus, 440 BCE/2005, bk. 3, pp. 80–83).1 It was perhaps Plato and Aristotle, however, who first began to think systematically about the different forms that regimes could take. In The Republic, Plato (360 BCE/1991) makes the case that political decision making should be based on expertise and that “ochlocracy,” or “mob rule,” would result from allowing all people to rule in a democracy (427e–29a). In effect, just as only trained pilots should Demokratia is a Greek word meaning “rule by the fly airplanes, Plato believed that only trained statesmen demos.” Although the Greek word demos often gets should guide the ship of state. The Greek word demokra- translated as “the people,” it refers more specifically tia often gets translated as “rule by the people” with no to the “common people”—those people with little mention about who these people are. In Plato and Aris- or no economic independence who are politically totle’s time, demos referred primarily to the “common uneducated. 1. The earliest use of the word demokratia is in the Histories written by Herodotus sometime in the 440s to 420s BC (Rhodes 2003, 19). In this work, Herodotus mentions a debate among the Persians as to the relative merits of democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy. Although Athens is often considered the first recorded democracy (sixth century BC), some scholars argue that democracy existed in a recognizable form even earlier in the republics of ancient India (Muhlberger and Paine 1993). 146 Principles of Comparative Politics STATES, REGIMES, AND GOVERNMENTS BOX 5.1 What is the difference between a state, a regime, and a government? Although it is common to see people use these terms interchangeably, they do in fact refer to distinct things. As we saw in the last chapter, the state is an entity that uses coercion and the threat of force to rule in a given territory. One can talk, for example, of the French state, the Iranian state, the Malaysian state, the Indian state, and so on. With the exception of relatively rare cases in which states merge (the formation of the United Arab A state is an entity that uses coercion and the Emirates in 1971) or break up (East Timor in 2002, South threat of force to rule in a given territory. A Sudan in 2011), the states that comprise the contempo- government is the set of people who run the state rary world system are generally quite stable. or have the authority to act on behalf of the state at In a very general sense, the government is the set of a particular point in time. A regime is the set of people who run the state or have the authority to act on rules, norms, or institutions that determine how the behalf of the state at a particular point in time. That is, government is constituted, how it is organized, and how major decisions are made. governments are the means through which state power is exercised. As examples, the governments of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Japan in 2011 were headed by President Barack Obama, King Abdullah of the Saud family, and Prime Minister Naoto Kan, respectively. While states are generally stable over time, governments come and go. A regime is the set of rules, norms, or institutions that determine how the government is constituted, how it is organized, and how major decisions are made. Regimes are generally classified as being either democratic or dictatorial, and are the focus of this chapter.

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