A Better Place to Be: Republicanism and the Liberal Democracy Index

Abstract

There are no indices of democracy that explicitly are based upon the concept of liberal democracy. Moreover, the political-theoretical concept of republicanism has never been incorporated into any indices of democracy. As a result, there is a disconnect between comparative Politics and Political theory when it comes to the empirical study of democracies. In this article, I discuss the creation of a liberal democracy index, which incorporates both the concept of liberal democracy and that of republicanism into evaluating and categorizing modern political regimes. I look at all sovereign states, both democracies and non-democracies and ultimately categorize all modern political regimes into seven categories, the highest of which is liberal democracy. There are some surprises in the findings in this study. For one thing, France is not a liberal democracy. On the other hand, Nicaragua is not a dictatorship. Only 49 sovereign states are dictatorships. Many states are democracies or republics but not both. The Liberal Democratic Index has the advantage of other indices in explicitly using liberal democracy and republicanism as its conceptual anchors. Instead of using a ranking system, which tends to subjective, this index uses a more objective categorical classification system. This index is much more in keeping with traditional political theory than are the other indices.