Democracy and dictatorship

Part 1. Measuring democracy
The study of democratic development plays an increasingly important role for both researchers, politicians and policy practitioners around the world. For example, both individual countries and international organizations make use of democratic standards as a criterion for the dispersion of foreign aid, foreign credit or trade agreements. However, in order to assess the degree of democracy achieved in a country, or whether a country can be considered a democracy, one has to make the concept of democracy measurable. How do you measure democracy? Is that something that can be done in better or worse ways?

The litterature ( 2 books are attached) make use of three different examples of measures (indices) of democracy:
• Freedom in the World by Freedom House (https://freedomhouse.org/reports/freedomworld/freedom-world-research-methodology );
• The Democracy Index by Economist Intelligence Unit (https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2021/ ); and
• The Electoral Democracy Index by Varieties of Democracy (https://www.vdem.net/project.html).
You can read about the Freedom in the World ranking and the Democracy Index in, for example, McCormick et al. (Comparative Government and Politics, pp. 108-111, 133-136) and about the VDem ranking in de Vries et al. (Foundations of European Politics, pp. 6, 9, 16).

Assignment (ca 375 words****) : Present, in writing, the methodology behind one of these democracy indices. Draw on both the litterature and the information on their respective websites, or on other reports on those websites. Discuss what is actually being measured, and what is not, by the index in question. Discuss the pros and cons of measuring democracy (or freedom) in this particular way. Take into consideration that there are different conceptions of what democracy means. On this, you can for example refer to Robert Dahl’s concept of “polyarchy” (see, e.g., McCormick et al., Comparative Government and Politics, pp. 106-7) and the difference between “minimalist” and “maximalist” conceptions of democracy (see, e.g., De Vries at al., Foundations of European Politics, pp. 5-6).

When quoting or paraphrasing is used, references are to be provided. Quotations are to appear within quotation marks.

Part 2: Is Turkey a democracy? ca 190 words***
Prepare a response to these questions (sourcing is not required for this part as it is going to be an oral response)
It happens, perhaps even more and more often, that politicians are required to state whether a specific country is a democracy or not. Such statements easily become controversial. The domestic audience may believe it self-evident that some countries should not be considered democracies, but to state this in public can for example harm relations with the country in question.

Imagine that you work as a newly employed civil servant in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The press office of the ministry is preparing a press conference where it has been alleged that the Foreign Secretary will be asked the question: “Is Turkey a democracy?”. How is the Foreign Secretary supposed to answer? Draw on one or several of the aforementioned indices of democracy (if you rely on V-Dem, drawing a graph may be helpful: https://www.vdem.net/data_analysis/CountryGraph/ ). Is it possible to answer the question on a scientific basis, without lapsing into personal opinion? Is it possible to answer the question in a way that can satisfy both the domestic Swedish audience and the Turkish government?

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