For policymakers, activists, academics, and citizens around the world the conceptualization and measurement of democracy matters. The needs of democracy promoters and social scientists are convergent. We all need better ...

This paper presents a new measure of electoral democracy, or "polyarchy", for a global sample of 173 countries from 1900 to the present based on the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) data, enabling us to address several ...

This study attempts to reconcile competing positions in the debate over whether democracy improves human development by showing that some aspects of democracy – but not others – affect human development. Specifically, we ...

Numerous studies have reported that countries tend to become more similar to their immediate geographic neighbors with respect to democracy. We show that a similar process of mutual adjustment can be found within very ...

Most schools of democratic theory consider political participation to have a positive impact in deepening democracy. Political participation makes democracies more accountable and freer, as well as creating more engaged, ...

This study takes a new tack on the question of modernization and democracy, focused on the outcome of theoretical interest. We argue that economic development affects the electoral component of democracy but has minimal ...

Recent work suggests that crowd workers can replace experts and trained coders in common coding tasks. However, while many political science applications require coders to both and relevant information and provide judgment, ...

This study argues that strong parties play a critical role in fostering economic development. The theory explores how parties broaden the constituencies to which policy makers respond and help politicians to solve coordination ...

While the definition of extended conceptions of democracy has been widely discussed, the measurement of these constructs has not attracted similar attention. In this paper we present new measures of polyarchy, liberal ...