Measuring Democracy and the Quality of Democracy in a World-Wide Approach: Models and Indices of Democracy and the New Findings of the “Democracy Rankingâ€

The central research question for this article is: How can democracy and the quality of democracy be measured globally and empirically? Certainly, democracy measurement represents a wider research field; however, this article wants to contribute to it by offering to the reader an introduction and by giving first views about the ideas of democracy measurement in a global comparison and world-wide approach. The article contrasts different approaches to the measurement of democracy, with a focus on three macro-models of democracy measurement as well as the democratic indices (indicators) that they apply specifically: Freedom House, Democracy Index and Democracy Ranking. All three initiatives want to measure a large number of democracies over a longer period of time. In conclusion, it could, at least implicitly, be argued for Freedom House: the higher the freedom evaluation of a country, the greater the chances are or the more there is an expectation of a tendency for an advanced quality of democracy.