Measuring Effective Democracy: The Human Empowerment Approach
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In: Comparative Politics, Vol. 43, No. 3, 2011, p. 271-289.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
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RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Measuring Effective Democracy
T2 - The Human Empowerment Approach
AU - Alexander, Amy Catherine
AU - Welzel, Christian
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - The core idea inspiring democracy is to empower people. To measure democracy in ways that capture its empowering nature, one must focus on popular rights and take into account rule of law as a state quality that makes these rights effective. Based on this premise, an index of "effective democracy," tested for 150 states, best represents the empowering nature of democracy because it most clearly captures democracy's embedding in empowering conditions in the wider society. Effective democracy is shown to be most firmly embedded in (a) empowering socioeconomic conditions that make people capable of practicing democracy and (b) empowering sociocultural conditions that make them willing to do so. People empowerment appears to be a unity of empowering societal conditions and empowering regime characteristics.
AB - The core idea inspiring democracy is to empower people. To measure democracy in ways that capture its empowering nature, one must focus on popular rights and take into account rule of law as a state quality that makes these rights effective. Based on this premise, an index of "effective democracy," tested for 150 states, best represents the empowering nature of democracy because it most clearly captures democracy's embedding in empowering conditions in the wider society. Effective democracy is shown to be most firmly embedded in (a) empowering socioeconomic conditions that make people capable of practicing democracy and (b) empowering sociocultural conditions that make them willing to do so. People empowerment appears to be a unity of empowering societal conditions and empowering regime characteristics.
KW - Politics
KW - democracy
KW - rule of law
KW - Personal empowerment
KW - Autocracy
KW - Economic indices
KW - Freedom
KW - Socioeconomics
KW - Social democracy
KW - World Bank
KW - Economic development
KW - Gender and Diversity
M3 - Journal articles
VL - 43
SP - 271
EP - 289
JO - Comparative Politics
JF - Comparative Politics
SN - 0010-4159
IS - 3
ER -