Measuring Democratic Competition: An Application to 20th century Latin America

Measuring Democratic Competition: An Application to 20th century Latin AmericaMiguel Centellas Jackson State UniversityDemocracy as multidimensional conceptModern democracy (polyarchy) is generally understood as a political system with three dimensions:CompetitionParticipationCivil and political liberties

Dahl, Robert. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Identifying/measuring democraciesBecause we want to understand how democracies emerge, survive, function, etc., we not only need a conceptual definition of democracy we also need clear empirical guidelines and/or measures to both identify democracies and distinguish them from non-democracies

Some measures also go further and seek to measure degrees of quality between democraciesCommon democracy indexesIndexTypeProcessCoverageFreedom HouseSubjectiveBased on annual country expert surveys1972-presentPolitySubjectiveBased on ongoing country expert surveys1800-presentDemocracy Index (The Economist)SubjectiveBased on periodic country expert surveys2006-presentDemocracy Barometer(NCCR, Switzerland)SubjectiveBased on ongoing country expert surveys1990-2012V-DEM project(U Gothenburg/ND)SubjectiveBased on ongoing country expert surveys1900-presentACLPEmpiricalObservable criteria1950-1990VanhanenEmpiricalUses election data1810-2000Criticisms of democracy indexesQuestions of reliability and validityProblems differentiating within regime categories

Bollen, Kenneth A. and Pamela Paxton. 2000. "Subjective Measures of Liberal Democracy." Comparative Political Studies 33 (1): 58-86.Gugiu, Mihaiela R. and Miguel Centellas. 2013. The Democracy Cluster Classification Index. Political Analysis 21 (3): 334-349.Hgstrm, John. 2013. Does the Choice Of Democracy Measure Matter? Comparisons Between the Two Leading Democracy Indices: Freedom House and Polity IV." Government and Opposition 48 (2): 201-221.Munck, Gerardo L. and Jay Verkuilen. 2002. Conceptualizing and measuring democracy Evaluating alternative indices." Comparative Political Studies 35 (1): 5-34.Empirically measuring democracy?David Altman and Anibal Prez-Lin (2002) attempted to empirically measure democracy using Dahls criteria.Competition: Estimates balance between typical government and opposition partiesParticipation: Voter turnout (%)Civil and political liberties: Freedom House index

Altman, David and Anibal Prez-Lin. 2002. Assessing the Quality of Democracy: Freedom, Competitiveness, and Participation in 18 Latin American Democracies. Democratization 9 (2): 85-100.Estimating political competitionAltman and Prez-Lin Index (C1):

Where G and O are the estimated typical government and opposition parties, based on seat shares (%):

The Altman & Prez-Lin (APL) IndexThe Altman & Prez-Lin (2002) combined democracy index (competition, participation, and FH scores) was highly correlated with Polity scoresHowever they only looked at 18 countries across a narrow timespan (1978-1996)

Problem of selection bias in studies of post third wave democracy in Latin America

Latin America prior to the third wave of democracy

My research replicates and expands the APL indexReplication: I apply the APL measure for competition to new time period (1900-1974) and new cases (Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba)Expansion:I modify the measure for competition to account for overall balance between government and opposition forces in legislature (C2)

Data SourcesCouncil on Foreign Relations. 1928-1962 (various). Political Handbook of the World. Harvard University Press.Nohlen, Dieter. 2005. Elections in the Americas: A Data Handbook, 2 vols. Oxford University Press.

Additional country-specific sources as available and/or necessary (listed in paper bibliography).

How does my sample (N=272) compare?

Testing for external validityPolity ScorePolity 3-Year AverageAdditive composite(C1+C2/2)0.5349(0.000)0.5319(0.000)Factor composite(C1*C2)0.5261(0.000)0.5236(0.000)Table reports Pearsons r and level of significance in parenthesis

However the outliers are interesting, and suggest that Polity scores are not very sensitive to changes in level of electoral legislative competition

which raises questions about the validity of Polity (and perhaps other subjective indexes)A Tale of Two Countries: Bolivia & Costa Rica

Future research agenda (and limitations)Look at earlier periods of history with similar empirical approaches used for contemporary politicsNeed to collect database of basic political indicators for Latin America prior to the 1970sNeed to conceptualize other components of competition (volatility, fractionalization)Need to conceptualize other dimensions of democracy (e.g. participation)