Dimensions of Democracy in Slovakia: The Long View, 1918-2012

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of Slovakia’s democratic development from 1918 to 2012, based on data from key indices and their constituent indicators from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project. It analyzes the historical development of the five Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) principles of democracy – electoral, liberal, egalitarian, deliberative and participatory – and provides an overview of the female rights index. The most apparent pattern is the U-shaped trajectory of democracy in the country. Two periods of relatively high achievement on democratic indices (during the first Czechoslovak Republic until 1938 and after the end of communism in 1989) bracket an era of autocratic rule (first within the fascist Slovak State and during the communist era). This overarching pattern can be seen not only in the high-level principles of democracy indices, but also in many – albeit not all – of their component indicators.