Measuring Democracy: The V Dem Project

The V Dem dataset is released by the V-Dem Institute, an independent research institute located at the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The institute was founded in 2014 by Staffan Linberg and now over 50 scientists across the world are involved in the collection of data on democratic performance. More than 3000 country experts provide codings for the dataset, both in present countries and historically going back to 1789. The institute also publishes a range of reports on the situation of democracy and developments in single countries. The dataset can be accessed here. We will present the dataset below. While reading, please keep in mind the questions below and answer them once you reached the end. In the final panel, we will provide a link to a platform with an interactive version of the dataset and additional tasks.

Table 1: General Tasks for the Dataset

Tasks
What conception of democracy, maximalist or minimalist, do the various V-Dem indices measure?
What are the events in the 20th century that produce the greatest shifts in democracy for European countries?
What is the conceptual difference between the indicators? Provide two examples in which a country performed considerably different on some indicator than on others and provide an explanation.

Dataset Description: Overall Information

Table 2 shows a part of the V Dem dataset with some of the countries in the year 2019. The dataset provides a general name for the country that is used for the complete historical record (country_name). Countries are included in the datas et if they are “a political unit enjoying at least some degree of functional and/or formal sovereignty.” Additionally, the variable “histname” shows the official name of the country at the time of survey, here 2019. The variable “codingstart_contemp” denotes from which year data is available for the country. This might either be because the country is recognized as a political unit as described above from that year on, or because data collection for the V Dem project goes back that far. The earliest year here is 1900, as that is the year the modern V Dem project goes back to. Additionally, there is a historical V Dem proejct, that goes back to the 18th century, as indicated in the variable “codingstart_hist”. We will here focus on the contemporary dataset.

Table 2: General Information in the V-Dem dataset

country_name	histname	codingstart_contemp	codingstart_hist
Switzerland	Swiss Confederation	1900	1798
Germany	Federal Republic of Germany	1900	1789
United Kingdom	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland	1900	1789
Denmark	Kingdom of Denmark	1900	1789
Malta	Republic of Malta [independent state]	1900	NA
Slovakia	Slovak Republic [independent state]	1939	NA

Main indices

Electoral democracy index

The electoral democracy index focuses on electoral aspects of democracy, in other words a procedural conceptualization of democracy. It is the basis for the following main indices (in the sense as they all combine the electoral democracy index with other variables). The index is made up of variables on freedom of association, clean elections, freedom of expression, elected officials and suffrage.

Liberal democracy index

The liberal democracy index combines the electoral index described above with measures of the liberal principle of democracy, focusing on the limits placed on the government. Its components include equality before the law and individual liberties as well as legislative and judicial constraints on the executive.

Participatory democracy index

The participatory democracy index combines the electoral index described above with measures of active participation of citizens in political processes. Its components include civil society participation, direct popular votea as well as elected local and regional government power.

Deliberative democracy index

The deliberative democracy index combines the electoral index described above with measures of policy-making and preference aggregation in the political system. Its components include reasoned justification by elites, whether policies are justified by the common good, respect for counterarguments and opposition and engagement with society.

Egalitarian democracy index

The egalitarian democracy index combines the electoral index described above with measures of egalitarianism in the country. Its components include the protection of rights and freedoms of individuals of all social groups, equal distribution of resources and equal access ro power.

Relationship between indices

Finally, we can also look at the relationship between different indices. As we would expect, they correlate to a certain degree (not least because electoral democracy is a part of the other main indices). However, we can also see some cases in which countries have much higher values on one index than on the other. We will explore this in more detail in the interactive excercise.

Cyclical Majorites in Politics

In the remainder of this online exercise, we will take a more detailed look at cyclical majorities that are discussed in chapter 3.

Starting Point

As we learned in chapter 2, political positions can be depicted in a one- or multidimensional model. Although, or rather because, these models simplify reality, they provide us with a valuable tool to understand political decisions. Figure 1 shows such an arrangement of political positions on two dimensions, the level of public spending on a park and the level of access to it. In this example, we have five actors, A, B, C, D, and E. All of these actors have one distinct position in the two-dimensional model. For example, actor A wants a high level of spending and open access to non-taxpayers. In the folllowing, we assume that the voters will have to make a decision about how to run the park. Thus, we need to understand which compromises have a majority among the five citizens.

Indifference Curves

Which points do the five voters prefer over a status quo policy that is currently in place? We can easily model this spatially. Figure 2 shows an example for two of the actors (actor B and D) and a hypothetical status quo SQ (with moderate spending for the park and limited access to non-taxpayers). Because an actor always prefers policies closer to their ideal point, actor B should prefer any policy that is closer. This is shown using an indifference curve, the circle that is centered at B’s ideal point with a radius equal to the distance between B and the status quo. The actor B is indifferent to the SQ for all points that lie on the circle (because there are equally good policies). Anything inside the circle is preferred by B, shown by the colored area. Similarly, D prefers all points inside the circle around her position. Note that there is some overlap in the circles. Both B and D would prefer policies in this overlapping area, the so called winset of the status quo, and could agree on a policy proposed within this winset if they were the only actors.

A First Proposal

Imagine the five voters come together in a town hall meeting. The mayor is part of this group and holds preferences at point D. Assume for now that this town hall meeting is an open forum in which all policy proposals can be voted against each other alternative. That is, no one has gatekeeping or agenda-setting powers, but simply the alternative supported by a majority should prevail.

Suppose now that mayor D speaks first at the meeting and introduces his plan, located at his own position, D. Following this presentation, citizen E comes forward and proposes a new proposal P1. This new proposal is now voted against proposal D. It turns out that P1 is preferred by a coalition of A, B, and E. This is shown in Figure 3, which depicts the areas in the policy space that each citizen prefers over proposal D. Remember that the indifferences curves show at which point the actors are indifferent between policy position D and a policy alternative (because it is equidistant from the actors’ respective ideal points). An actor prefers any outcome within her circle (indifference curve) to the status quo. She is indifferent between the status quo and any point along the curve, and she prefers the status quo over any point outside of her indifference curve.

Counterporposals

P1 has now obtained a majority, but the discussion is not over. Citizen A is not happy with the outcome; she wants a better park, i.e. higher level of spending, but roughly the same level of access. She proposes policy P2, which is voted against P1 (Figure 4). This proposal also obtains a majority, with A, B, and C voting for it. Actors D and E would be worse off under this alternative and oppose the measure.

It looks like the town has arrived at a solution, but before the meeting is over, mayor D gets to get a final say in the meeting and suggests as a compromise her initial proposal D. It turns out that, compared to P2, C, D, and E all prefer the policy D, reflecting a lower level of spending and more restrictive access to the park (see Figure 5). Thus, the policy has cycled from an initial position to another outcome and then back to the initial proposal.

Conclusion: Cyclical Majorities

In a particular literature on group decision-making known as “social choice”, this finding that policy outcomes can move around in a policy space with two or more dimensions is known as the chaos theorem, and it was initially described by Richard McKelvey. Formally, the theorem states that in a multidimensional spatial setting, there is no stable policy outcome that beats all other policy alternatives by majority in a pairwise comparison. Whoever controls the sequence of voting, can control the collective choice of the society. Box 2.1 in the book explains the phenomenon of cyclical majorities in more detail.

The finding is disconcerting: it means that if societies need to decide complex issues simultaneously (i.e. in a multidimensional space) and if they use a simple democratic decision rule (i.e. pairwise voting of each alternative against another one by majority), then we actually do not know what this society collectively wants. Any outcome can feasibly be legitimate because it gathers a majority of voters. How do we end up with stable outcomes? This is where the design of political institutions becomes crucial. We can limit the actors who can set the agenda in constitutions (e.g. cabinets or parliamentary parties in parliamentary democracies or the Commission in the European Union). Additionally, political systems can limit the amendment possibilities to the initial proposal, or the rules may insist that any final proposal be compared to the status quo. Finally, the rules could raise the threshold for decision-making from a simple majority to a supermajority (e.g. as in the Council of the European Union). All of these possibilities make stable policy outcomes more likely. If agenda-setting politicians can use their position to pull policies in its preferred direction, then holding such actors to account becomes crucially important. This is why electoral accountability (i.e. the ability to remove governments from office through elections) is important for understanding how democracies work.