Ordinal Versions of V-Dem's Indices: For Classification, Description, Sequencing Analysis and Other Purposes

Abstract

Varieties of Democracy, or V-Dem for short, is approaching the conceptualization and measurement of democracy on the notions that democracy is multifaceted conceptually, and a matter of degree from a measurement perspective (Coppedge et al. 2015a, b, Lindberg et al. 2015). This is fully in line with my own position on this issue. For example, as a core institution of electoral democracy, multiparty elections are supposedly the only means to decide who holds legislative and executive power respectively. Yet, de jure multiparty elections take place in less than democracies too and elections, pace the political system writ large, can be characterized by varying degrees of democratic features ranging from zero to a theoretical maximum. The same reasoning can be applied to other varieties of democracy such as liberal, egalitarian, participatory, or deliberative democracy. This reasoning, which I have also pursued elsewhere, translates into viewing democracy as an attribute of the political system.