Making Trade-Offs Visible: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations about the Relationship between Dimensions and Institutions of Democracy and Empirical Findings

Abstract

Whereas the measurement of the quality of democracy focused on the rough differentiation of democracies and autocracies in the beginning (e.g. Vanhanen, Polity, Freedom House), the focal point of newer instruments is the assessment of the quality of established democracies. In this context, tensions resp. trade-offs between dimensions of democracy are discussed as well (e.g. Democracy Barometer, Varieties of Democracy). However, these approaches lack a systematic discussion of trade-offs and they are not able to show trade-offs empirically. We address this research desideratum in a three-step process: Firstly, we propose a new conceptual approach, which distinguishes between two different modes of relationships between dimensions: mutual reinforcing effects and a give-and-take relationship (trade-offs) between dimensions. By introducing our measurement tool, Democracy Matrix, we finally locate mutually reinforcing effects as well as trade-offs. Secondly, we provide a new methodological approach to measure trade-offs. While one measuring strategy captures the mutual reinforcing effects, the other strategy employs indicators, which serve to gauge trade-offs. Thirdly, we demonstrate empirical findings of our measurement drawing on the Varieties of Democracy dataset. Incorporating tradeoffs into the measurement enables us to identify various profiles of democracy (libertarian, egalitarian and control-focused democracy) via the quality of its dimensions.

Democracy and the Environment: How Political Freedom Is Linked with Environmental Sustainability

“…Hans-Joachim Lauth [70] suggested a three-dimensional modelling of democracy, referring to the dimensions of freedom, equality, and control (see also [71][72][73][74]). In the words of Lauth, freedom (political freedom) represents a basic foundation for democracy, implying that without the accomplishment of a sufficient degree of (political) freedom, a democracy is not possible.…”

Why Choice Matters: Revisiting and Comparing Measures of Democracy

“…Although the field has accumulated much methodological wisdom over the years, several lacunae remain. The contribution of Lauth and Schlenkrich (2018) presents an approach to tackle the long-standing question of whether there is a trade-off between certain democratic principles-first and foremost whether both freedom and equality can be maximized in a democracy. In doing so, it allows for a more valid operationalization of various democratic models without demanding a normative decision on which model constitutes the best model of democracy.…”

“…Distinguishing between different features and sub-dimensions of democracy, the authors show that only certain features of democracy have a positive impact on climate protection and that the underlying mechanisms are impossible to identify if scholars focus only on highly aggregated democracy scores. Linking this to the trade-off approach developed by Lauth and Schlenkrich (2018), there is clear evidence that scholars should also make use of democracy measures below their highest levels of aggregation.…”

Identifying Profiles of Democracies: A Cluster Analysis Based on the Democracy Matrix Dataset from 1900 to 2017

“…In this article, we draw on the novel dataset of the Democracy Matrix (Lauth & Schlenkrich, 2018a) which is a customized version of the Varieties of Democracy dataset (Coppedge et al, 2018). It is a measurement instrument which is not only designed to gauge the quality of democracy, but also to capture several tradeoffs between dimensions caused by specific institutional choices of the democracies.…”