bringing direct democracy back in toward a three-dimensional altman

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Bringing direct democracy back in: toward a three-dimensional

measure of democracy

David Altman∗

Instituto de Ciencia Polı tica, Pontificia Universidad Cato lica de Chile,Santiago de Chile, Chile

( Received June 2011; final version received December 2011)

To Guillermo O’Donnell, In Memoriam

Most procedural definitions and measurements of democracy are missing onecrucial component: direct popular decision-making. This is an important gapthat does not allow users of data to ascertain some important variationamong democracies. Thus, I propose a new measure that is stronglyanchored in a procedural definition of democracy but includes this missingdimension. The proposed measure is well rooted in the literature and

introduces a dimension whereby citizens may become the masters of their political fate at any time and without the consent of elected authorities, whileavoiding the inclusion of extraneous attributes that are not highlighted indemocratic theory. Tests of the validity of the new indicator, using LatinAmerican cases, show that there is enough room for its inclusion without thetypical collinearity problems this literature faces. This indicator is not onlysound, but it is empirically appealing as it performs better than others whentesting relevant hypotheses.

Keywords: measuring democracy; index of democracy; direct democracy;referendums; popular initiatives; direct popular decision-making; LatinAmerica

Democratization, 2013

Vol. 20, No. 4, 615– 641, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2012.659020

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These attributes include an almost universal extension of voting rights, clean and

fair elections, the protection of civil liberties and political rights, the filling of criti-cal public offices through elections, and the enabling of election winners both to

assume their offices and to govern. And if even one of these attributes is

lacking, no matter how good the record is on the other attributes, we cannot classify

a regime as a democracy.

Unlike some exercises that seek to attach theoretically unrelated attributes to

the concept of democracy,

3

this work seeks to complement some of the current indices of democracy with one of the purest components of the democratic tradition

hitherto not included in such indices: direct popular decision-making .4 Existing

measures of democracy focus mainly on the electoral connection between voters

and representatives and disregard an important democratic practice, the direct

role of citizens on policy issues.

Thus, this article attempts to revitalize something that has been one of the

intrinsic backbones and leitmotivs of the democratic tradition since its veryAthenian incarnation two and a half millennia ago: popular sovereignty as a

way of addressing the demands of citizens and the dependence of public pol-

icies on their preferences. As any constitutive part of democracy, such as

freedom of expression, is expected to be fulfilled both continually and indefi-

nitely in the future, this must hold true for popular sovereignty as well – and

it should not be limited to just one day every few years. The question is: Howcan current democracies translate popular sovereignty into working institutions

adapted to twenty-first century representative government? I claim that there

are some institutions that deserve a closer look: These institutions comprise

the citizen initiated mechanisms of direct democracy (optional popular initiat-

ives and referendums). I understand these citizen-initiated mechanisms of

direct democracy as the real translation of direct citizen decision-making

into contemporary democracy. Citizen-initiated mechanisms of direct democ-racy are not simply about a blind use of majority rule, and those understand-

ing them as mere votes on a certain issue are ignoring possibly the most

crucial part of the direct democratic game: the process itself, which is argu-

ably more important than the outcome of the ballots themselves; I will

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countries and, especially, to differentiate polyarchies from other types of regime,

they do not help much in differentiating among polyarchies. In other words, inas-much as I am interested in distinguishing among extreme regime options, most

measures – even with their weaknesses – are useful in ordering them along a

democracy-autocracy continuum. Nonetheless, as I only work with those

countries that satisfy the polyarchic minimums, these indices become guns

without ammunition. To fill this gap, I defend the idea that most procedural defi-

nitions of democracy are missing one crucial component of the democratic tra-dition, direct popular decision-making . Indeed, the inclusion of this potential

third dimension – seen as supplementing Dahl’s two dimensions of contestation

and participation – would constitute an overdue updating of our conceptualiz-

ation of democracy, recognizing that citizens may become the owners of their

political future at any time.

The second section discusses the construction of an alternative, three-dimen-

sional measure of democracy and explains how this measure tackled the challengesof conceptualization, measurement, and aggregation. This new measure builds on

current theory and offers a better understanding of the subset of countries that are

polyarchies. The third section tests the validity of the new measure, using data on

Latin America, and compares it to other indices of democracy. Finally, some con-

cluding remarks are offered.

On indices of democracy: the challenge of developing three-dimensional

measures

Not all indices of democracy are created equal

Schumpeter offered perhaps the first attempt to provide a working definition that

challenged the classical, more normative, doctrine of democracy.6 In his view,democracy was not an end in itself, but rather a competitive process or struggle

for the people’s vote.7 Schumpeter’s ‘minimalist’ definition of democracy has

been innovative foundation in this literature. Since Schumpeter’s time, a wide

array of democracy indices have been proposed, analysed, criticized, and re-

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into consideration whether previous research is theoretically grounded and

whether methodological choices have been adequately justified. If a researcher considers Index ‘A’ to be flawed for either theoretical or methodological

reasons it is absolutely inconsistent to validate the new proposal ‘B’ showing

that it correlates with ‘A’. It is not only a futile exercise, but it might also under-

mine the claim that ‘B’ is a useful alternative. If truth be told, this validation pro-

cedure seems more a disciplinary ritual than a proper scientific endeavour. In this

article, however, I will not validate my contribution as ritually done; I depart fromtheoretically driven hypotheses about the correspondence between our measure

and the existing ones.

Although the discussions about the validity and reliability of different ways of

measuring democracy show the shortcomings of these indices, these problems do

not seem to be much bigger than with any other concept in the social sciences. The

constant emergence of new indices, each attempting to show its superiority over the

existing ones, allows us to rethink the systematic biases and theoretical or oper-ational options implicit in each former index.

Not all the work in this subfield has been reduced to the creation of new indices.

Indeed, some scholars have focused on the empirical similarities and differences of

indicators and revealed key insights about existing measures of democracy.9 These

scholars aim at extracting the common denominators of the most relevant indices

and empirically aligning measurements with conceptual definitions of democracy.They stress that the dimensionality of democracy is crucial, because if we are col-

lapsing indicators from different dimensions into a unique index we are most likely

inflating our measurement error, and if we include extremely similar indicators in

different dimensions we most likely face an important amount of collinearity.10

And they stress that most current indices of democracy are not sensitive enough

to differentiate among countries at the top end of the scales (the democratic

regimes). To be fair, the assessed measures of democracy were not particularlydesigned to make these differentiations. But, it seems to be clear that instruments

designed to grade regimes in a wide range between full authoritarianism and full

democracy might lack sensitivity to discriminate within the pool of polyarchies

clustered at one extreme of the range.

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Democracy in three dimensions

For contemporary nation states that encompass millions of citizens, representative

democracy is, unquestionably, the best regime in town. Representative democracy

is far from perfect though, displaying numerous problems and shortcomings. Agreat consensus exists about the contemporary challenges of democracies: high

levels of civic disaffection, distrust of political parties, and in general, an animosity

toward the democratic game. In addition, one of the most tricky aspects of our

democracies lies in the direct and daily relationship between citizens and the

state.12 Indeed, Dunn’s warning about representative democracy – ‘one day’s

rule every four years has very much the air of a placebo’13 – is pretty illustrative

of the problems afflicting current democracies.

Based on this distressing situation, a number of programmes – perhaps an

excessive number – have focused on the challenge of improving democratic insti-

tutions, and electoral systems especially. Again, elections become the goal of ana-

lysts, overlooking the period between elections. Nonetheless, some analysts with a

broader view warn us that ‘the development of democracy is much more than the

perfection of its electoral system’.14

Current democracies are indisputably far from what the ideal representative

democracy theory promises us. A claim could even be made that they resemble

more an oligarchy with a facade of democracy than the prototypical representative

democracy we discuss with our students every year. In the words of Walzer, ‘gov-

Figure 1. From a 2D to a 3D conception of democracy.

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identities, and preferences of individuals.18 They also frame the choices available

to individuals through incentive mechanisms.19

Yet, political representative insti-tutions are far from perfect. For example, in the typical representative democratic

process, sometimes candidates manipulate citizens to get elected,20 sometimes

leaders cheat once in office21 and, sometimes they advance their narrow, selfish

interests.22 There is no vaccine against all of these risks.

What seems quite telling, however, is that in the most commonly used com-

parative indices of democracy the role of citizens is basically reduced to their par-ticipation in the electoral process for the election of authorities.23 But democracy, I

argue, is an ongoing process that overflows the 12 or 13 times we exercise our elec-

toral rights in our lives. These inter-election spaces constitute the weakest link of

current democracies. They tend to be left aside as an empty space just filled with

horizontal – but not vertical – accountability, in a way eliminating the most impor-

tant component of what Dahl calls the ‘first polyarchy transformation’.24

Contemporary democracies must be able to provide tools for controlling these behaviours both horizontally (by other institutions) and vertically (by citizens). A

narrow electoralist conceptualization of democracy, almost Schumpeterian, would

tell us that citizens do this regularly in national elections, activating their sovereignty,

punishing misbehaviours and rewarding the others. Nevertheless, ‘the chances to

exercise vertical accountability, however, are only periodic and, in some cases, citi-

zens must wait several years for the next elections’

25

; stated more bluntly: ‘In elec-tions the people is omnipotent; between elections it is impotent’.26

The implications of these, rather scattered , flashes of popular sovereignty for the

crafting of institutions of control are evident. If the people’s interest is being under-

mined or ignored, it is in the people’s interest to activate its democratic power, its

sovereignty, in order to force a change in the status quo or its maintenance. The

later comes in the shape of referendums (trying to stop certain measures going

against the general preferences), the former in the shape of popular initiatives(trying to push forward certain measures that, otherwise, the establishment would

not consider by its own motivation). Thus, I propose that an adequate concept of

democracy should include, as a third dimension, direct popular decision-making.27

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includes direct popular decision-making. In this regard, I highlight the following key

points. Following Altman’s definition, I broadly define mechanisms of direct democ-racy (MDD) as ‘publicly recognized institutions through which citizens decide or

express their preferences on issues – other than the filling of government offices

through legislative and executive elections – directly at the ballot box through univer-

sal and secret suffrage’.28 Furthermore, starting from this definition, it is important to

distinguish between three classes of MDDs: (1) MDDs that are ‘citizen-initiated’

(through the gathering of signatures), hereafterCI-MDDs, (2)‘top-down’ MDDs(trig-

gered by the sitting legislative assembly, the executive power, or both), hereafter TD-

MDDs, and (3) constitutionally mandated MDDs. These MDDs mean different things

and thus should not be confused. Indeed, I only consider CI-MDDs or constitutionally

mandated MDDs as the real translation of direct popular decision-making . In contrast,

as is customary, I see TD-MDDs as plebiscitary means, either for bypassing other

representative institutions, disengaging from the responsibility for making tough

policy decisions, or simply as a tool for populist mobilization and/or legitimization.29

Advocates of direct democracy are basically divided in two groups: those who

see it as an alternative to – and even a replacement for – representative democracy,

and those who appreciate it as a complement.30 Within this debate, I follow the

second line of argument. Yet, I am not alone nor is there a lack of basis for my argu-

ment; I am following Robert Dahl, who claims ‘I see the institution of the minipo-

pulus in Polyarchy III not as a substitute for legislative bodies but as a complement.It would supplement, not replace’.31

To avoid misunderstanding, I am not implying or advocating that citizens

deciding directly is always desirable or wise. Nor am I arguing that decisions

taken by CI-MDDs are necessarily efficient, good, just, or that there is no

tension between these decisions and representative institutions. Rather, I am claim-

ing simply that such decision-making is more democratic. Moreover, this assertion

should not be understood as a romanticized version of direct democracy, or assupport for other types of democracy such as participatory or deliberative democ-

racy. I simply claim that CI-MDDs are control mechanisms to be potentially used

by citizens, and it does not imply voting every week, nor the steamrolling of min-

orities through majority rule, nor the substitution of party politics by citizens. More

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Evidence shows that direct democracy is growing worldwide.39 Some

countries excel in terms of the uses of CI-MDDs at the national level; of course,not only the Swiss (by far the world champions in these terms), but also the Italians,

Lithuanians, and Slovenians. Furthermore, even going beyond the borders of con-

tinental Europe, we not only find countries such as Uruguay, which has a long and

consolidated tradition with initiatives and referendums, but also ‘newcomers’ such

as Bolivia or Taiwan. Additionally, a new wave of municipally-driven initiatives

and referendums in Europe and beyond provide more evidence of direct democ-

racy’s expansion.

Measurement: the operationalization and measurement of direct popular

decision-making

The incorporation of direct democracy into a measure of democracy faces some

tricky methodological decisions. The menace of a CI-MDD (a reactive referendumor a proactive popular initiative) plays a crucial role in moderating political

decisions and shifting the political course even before the gathering of signatures

starts. Thus, the major problem we face is how to quantify something that we might

never see, but its potential use still has an enormous impact on political life. Let us

call this effect the direct democracy paradox. In Switzerland the activation of a CI-

MDD implies that the appraised Konkordanz already failed.

40

If the reader bears with me, then she will understand why, for example, ‘simply’

counting MDDs is senseless for this objective of measuring how much direct

democracy there is in a given country.41 Such an approach to measurement

would reward divided societies where political consensus is not attainable and

thus everyone uses all the ammunition at their disposal for reaching their goals.

On the contrary, a society where agreements are found before everyone uses the

strongest weapon in their hands would be punished. Thus, conceptually, I might have the very same ‘amount’ of direct democracy in both places, but in ‘A’

several MDDs are held per year and in the other, ‘B’, MDDs appear once in a while.

There is another issue, concerning how to address the legal right to, as opposed

to the actual use of, mechanisms of direct democracy. In terms of this issue, I con-

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initiative is the most democratic institution within the scope of direct democracy44

is something that allows us to approach measurement decisions in a non-arbitraryway.45 And drawing on such insights we propose to measure direct popular

decision-making with a five-point scale, which ranges from non-existence to the

most deserving category involving deciding directly at the ballots on matters of

citizen concern, even without the consent of the country’s main political officers

both as veto or proactive player on certain topics (see Table 1).46

As with any institution – even within a single type of CI-MDD, say a popular

initiative – there are important differences at the procedural level and countless

available possibilities for their deployment. These differences (for example, in

terms of the amount of signatures required, participation and approval quorums,

time limits, qualifiers, etc.) are crucial for assessing the degree of potential use

of direct democracy. But again, these problems do not seem to be more significant

than they are for other attributes of democracy. For example, one of the rights

included in almost all indices of democracy is the right to vote. This right mayrange from ‘no vote’ to a universally recognized right to vote. Let us assume

that we are located at the fullest extension of this right. Is a country that enfran-

chises those over 16 years of age (as in Austria, Brazil, or Nicaragua), more

Table 1. A scale of direct popular decision-making.

Are citizens allowed to decide directly and bindingly at the ballots (through a secret,universal, and binding vote) on matters of their concern (other than elections for authoritiesor representatives) even without the consent of the country’s main political offices (thenational executive and/or legislative)?

0 0.00 None No possibility for citizens to decide directlyat the ballots on matters of their concernwhatsoever.

1 0.25 Mandatory referendums(confirmatory)

Citizens are only allowed to decide directlyat the ballots on constitutional matters or

basic laws as convened by the sameconstitution or basic law.

2 0.50 Referendums (reactive) Citizens are allowed to decide directly at theb ll f h i i h

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democratic than one that allows only those over 21 years of age to participate (as in

Gabon, Central African Republic, or Fiji)? Is a country that requires 8% of the civicregistry for triggering a referendum (as does Ecuador), substantially more demo-

cratic than one that requires 25% (as does Uruguay)? I am fully aware that the oper-

ationalization of direct policy-making leaves many aspects untouched and that it

requires further refinement.

Aggregation: integrating DDM with existing indices of democracy

Aggregation rules must be based on a theory concerning the connection between

the attributes of the concept we are trying to capture.47 In constructing democracy

in three dimensions, hereafter D3D, I do not claim that direct popular decision-

making is either a necessary or a sufficient condition for a regime to be considered

democratic. That would be naıve. Yet it is not unreasonable to claim DDM would

make a democratic regime more democratic. This means that there are some attributes whose presence is sine qua non for a regime to be considered democratic

(free elections, right to vote, etc.), and the absence of just one of those brings

the whole concept to its theoretical minimum. Therefore, as direct democracy

today is more a supplement to, rather than a functional equivalent of, representative

democracy, addition is the more correct procedure.

Some scholars would consider that direct decision-making constitutes a com-

ponent of participation.48 In their opinion, participation should not be reduced to

simple electoral turnout as there are many facets of participation that are usually

ignored or overlooked by this simple indicator (demonstrations, signing petitions,

sending letters to representatives, hunger strikes, etc.). However, all these actions

have something in common: they are all aimed at changing or simply influencing

decisions made by authorities. Direct decision-making refers to something sub-

stantially different: through it citizens become the authorities, the authoritativedecision-makers. Being able to decide on matters without the consent of a coun-

try’s political offices not only goes much beyond participation (as most of the lit-

erature understands it), it is becoming the owner of one’s future.

As we know, any particular conceptualization has a direct implication in the

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measures, we could even reach the conclusion that a country with zero electoral

turnout is democratic in a case where it has quite a high level of direct decision-making. Certainly, this would violate the polyarchy minimums.52

The D3D’s aggregation rule relies on an equation with two terms: D3D ¼

(Democracy) + (Direct Decision Making). Of course, as some indices of democ-

racy perform rather well we leave open the term ‘democracy’, it being the research-

er’s responsibility to determine whether to go with a more conceptually demanding

but less detailed measure of democracy, or to go for a less demanding concept but

more ingrained measure of democracy.

From the perspective of aggregation the D3D becomes a ‘complex’ index of

democracy because it does not adhere to defaults such as additivity, but combines

two logic operators (∗) and (+).53 For sure, unless this equation is altered, each

term has an equal weighting; in other words, direct popular decision-making is as

important as all the other attributes together, which is patently inadequate in light

of our theory. Though any arbitrary particular weighting would be highly deba-table, say 80/20 or 75/25, a 50/50 is much more controversial. Given the

growing importance of direct involvement of citizens in current politics, a 3/1

relationship seems accurate and sound to describe this relationship. As this is

the very first step in combining aspects of representative and direct democracy,

much more work needs to be done on the subject to have a more solid basis

for assigning weights. Yet, we have to start somewhere and this proposal is

aimed simply at beginning the discussion. Hence, the D3D final equation will

be expressed as follows:

D3D ¼ (democracy ∗ 0.75) + (DDM ∗ 0.25)

The next section tests the validity of the new indicator, using data on Latin

America, and shows that there is enough room for its inclusion without the

typical collinearity problems this literature faces. This indicator is not onlysound, it is empirically appealing, as it performs better than others when testing rel-

evant hypotheses.

Validating the new measure of democracy: the data and the tests

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correlation or very low correlations hide an intimate relationship between the con-

sidered indices. In any case, these ‘tests shed little light on the core issue of the rela-tive validity of alternative measures’.62

Criterion-related validation is difficult in this case because, to my knowledge,

no other measures of direct popular decision-making other than the one proposed

are available. Evidently it is extremely hard to think of a non-democratic regime

that allows its citizens to gather signatures either for maintaining or changing

the status quo if the authorities do not want it so. Therefore, I expect that

popular sovereignty will be weakly correlated to other indices of democracy,

and if it is, this relationship will be evident just at the upper level of their scales.

As stated previously, given that I have strong reasons to doubt the internal consist-

ency, aggregation procedures, and even the theoretical grounding of several

indices, it adds little value to validate ours against those. In any case, as part of

the ritual in the discipline mentioned above, I include the two most used large- N

databases in this validity test (Freedom House and Polity IV). Thus, I will not only validate my new contribution with those indices we consider theoretically

grounded, and methodologically sound (LAD and EDI), but also with those that

fall far short in these dimensions. I proceed by carrying out two tests, (1) direct

popular decision-making correlation with the mentioned indices, and (2) a factor

analysis among the four data sets, including our measure of direct popular

decision-making. On the one hand, I hope to find low correlations between my

new measure and the other indices of democracy. On the other hand, when the

five measurements undergo factor analysis I hope that two components will be

extracted: one factor should be composed principally of the four democratic

measures and the remaining factor should be my measurement.

Before proceeding with the tests, let me note first that my addendum has more

variance than the considered democracy indices. As indicated above, one of the

problems with current indices of democracy is that they help us little in discrimi-nating among democracies. Once a certain threshold has been surpassed, as in most

Latin American countries during the last 20 years, these indices tend to concentrate

around very few points in the democratic continuum.63 If several different vari-

ables have similar scales we can then visually compare their distributions

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Figure 2. Average distribution of Latin American cases using different measures of democracy (1990–2009).

Table 2. Correlation matrix for measures of democracy in Latin America (1990 – 2009).

EDI LAD Freedom House Polity IV

LAD 0.5592 (0.000)FreedomHouse

0.4766 (0.000) 0.6975 (0.000)

Polity IV 0.5233 (0.000) 0.5886 (0.000) 0.7063 (0.000)DDM 20.1432 (0.008) 20.1538 (0.002) 20.0196 (0.7036) 0.1076 (0.041)

N All i di lib d h h (0 1) d di i i ifi i hi

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by the dimensions incorporated into the currently available indexes (as reflected

in the variance captured by factor 1). This is also reflected by the uniqueness esti-mation, which shows that the direct democracy variable is the most unique (and

therefore shares the least common variance) of the set included in the analysis. In

short, all of this information allows me to conclude with certainty that this

measure is an orthogonal dimension of existing indices and that it is highly unli-

kely we are merely measuring a latent phenomenon.

The second step regarding concept validity is checking whether the new

measure is highly correlated with phenomena that it is theoretically expected to

be closely related to (construct validity). For construct validation, I relied on

what Adcock and Collier called the AHEM (Assume the Hypothesis, Evaluate

the Measure) validity test.64 This is a difficult task because the literature on

direct democracy is at an early stage, and there are no well-established hypotheses

about the relationship between direct democracy and democracy in a broad com-

parative perspective.In spite of this, a significant section of the literature on direct democracy makes

strong claims that these institutions have an educational effect on citizenry.65 It also

claims that, as a pedagogical tool, increased opportunities for participation in the

legislative process make citizens more aware about civics and more virtuous,

and, in some sense, freer.66 Indeed, such public involvement combats apathy

and alienation; the citizen will feel more concerned when issues relevant to

the public are considered. Actually, in a study carried out in Switzerland, Frey,

Kucher, and Stutzer show that the reported subjective well-being of the population

is much higher in jurisdictions with stronger direct democratic rights. As they say:

‘This is not only the case because people value political outcomes higher but also

because they derive utility from the political process itself.’67

Based on these works, I suspect that countries where direct popular decision-

making exists will show higher levels of satisfaction and support for democracy.In order to test this, data are analysed using cross-sectional time-series regression

with panel-corrected standard errors.68 The dependent variables are a country’s

average satisfaction with democracy (Table 4) and a country’s average support

for democracy (Table 5). Satisfaction and support for democracy are based on

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Table 4. Satisfaction with democracy in 18 Latin American countries (1995– 2009).

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5

EDI 20.16∗

(8.74)LAD 11.37∗∗

(4.05)D3D based on EDI 48.04∗∗∗

(10.42)D3D based on LAD 25.35∗∗∗

(6.03)DDM 14.34∗∗∗

(2.52)Constant 15.86∗

(8.02)26.48∗∗ ∗

(3.33)21.50

(7.78)18.81∗∗∗

(3.79)32.62∗∗∗

(1.25)Wald X2 5.31 7.86 21.25 17.65 32.20

Prob.

x

2

0.021 0.005 0.000 0.000 0.000 R2 0.029 0.037 0.120 0.101 0.089 N 200 236 200 236 236Avg.Obs.(g) 11.11 13.11 11.11 13.11 13.11

Notes: Time-series cross-sectional data; unstandardized regression coefficients with panel correctedstandard errors (PCSE). Groups ¼ 18.∗∗ ∗ p , 0.001.∗∗ p , 0.01.∗ p , 0.05.

Table 5. Support for democracy in 18 Latin American countries (1995– 2009).

Model 6 Model 7 Model 8 Model 9 Model 10

EDI 18.74

(9.71)LAD 8.36∗

(3.55)D3D based on EDI 40.54∗∗∗

(11.29)D3D based on LAD 19.38∗∗∗

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Conclusions

The D3D is the contemporary translation of the two strong liberal premises that scholars do not always make explicit but that constitute the basis of modern democ-

racies, namely: (a) that people are able to accurately perceive their own needs, and

(b) that ‘either alone or as part of a group, people are the only possible judges of

their own needs [. . .] this is to say, no third party can decide those needs’. 71 The

operational transformation of direct popular decision-making, should be included

in any modern-day assessment of democracy simply because they democratizedemocracy. Indeed, possibly ‘the time will come when nobody will remember

that there were earlier times when the people were not able to decide their fate

directly’.72

My contribution is well rooted in the literature and it is strongly anchored in a

procedural definition of democracy. This new way of measuring democracies

brings democracy back in without appealing to extraneous attributes – that vary

from a ‘decent social minimum’,73 a minimum degree of ‘social integration’,74 to‘human development’75 – for which we still lack agreement. Of course, while we

are very fond of all of these mentioned preconditions (and many others), it

remains a debatable point whether these preconditions belong to the concept

itself.76 Empirical endogeneity and theoretical blurriness is an explosive cocktail

in this particular literature. Though a country might provide high standards of

social minimums, social integration, human development, great environmental pro-tection, and might be a bucolic and wonderful place to live in, it does not mean that it

is more democratic than other countries that have less of any of the mentioned charac-

teristics, but where its citizens could play a much more relevant role in politics as

defined here.

Also, it avoids being at any extreme of a minimalist or a maximalist definition

of democracy (for a discussion on this topic see Collier and Levitsky 77), and it

makes explicit the theory of the relationship among attributes, components, andsubcomponents, as claimed by Munck 78 and Goertz79 for whom any conceptual-

ization has a direct implication in the way its attributes are aggregated. Because

conceptualization is both closely associated with theory and a developing endea-

vour that is eventually evaluated in terms of the success of theories it helps to for

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referees of Democratization for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this

paper.This research is framed within the FONDECYT’s Project N8

1110368, and the Mil-lennium Nucleus for the Study of Stateness and Democracy in Latin America, Project NS100014. All caveats apply.

Notes

1. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, 340.2. Coppedge, ‘Democracy and Dimensions’, 35.3. For example Freedom House includes the right to own property and establish private

businesses and Polity IV omits participation. While the first might be superfluous, thesecond does not fit the theory.

4. By popular I am not referring to how fashionable something is (popular v. unpopular);I am simply relating to the people. From this point on, ‘direct popular decision-making’ could be read as ‘direct citizen decision-making’, or even simpler: ‘direct decision-making’.

5. I understand that I can be perfectly free under a representative government without popular direct decision-making. The world, in fact, is full of many cases in whichgreat democratic rights exist without direct democracy. But there is not one singlecase of a country where participation and contestation flourish on the basis of direct democracy without solid representative institutions.

6. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.7. Ibid., 269.8. Ward, ‘Green Binders in Cyberspace’, 47. Ward refers to the nine democracy indices

studied in the already classic work of Munck and Verkuilen, ‘Conceptualizing andMeasuring Democracy’. It has to be said that despite there being a positive correlationamong the existing democracy indexes, it does not mean that these correlated indexesdo not sometimes have different biases (for example, judge biases) and confounders(for example, political stability).

9. Coppedge and Reinicke, ‘Measuring Polyarchy’; Coppedge, Alvarez, and Maldo-nado, ‘Two Persistent Dimensions of Democracy’. Another group of scholars has

been deeply concerned about conceptual stretching, conflation and redundancies,

muddled and inadequate coding rules, low discriminatory power, and the unsubstan-tiated aggregation rules of highly used indices (Skaaning, ‘Measuring Civil Liberty’;Munck and Verkuilen, ‘Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy’; Hadenius andTeorell, ‘Assessing Alternative Indices of Democracy’). In this regard see the path-

breaking work of Bollen and Grandjean, ‘The Dimension(s) of Democracy’.10 Coppedge Alvarez and Maldonado ‘Two Persistent Dimensions of Democracy’

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significant support from below, these measures do not prosper. Serdult and Welp,

‘Referendos e iniciativas populares’, do a great job of describing who the instigatorsof CI-MDDs are in Switzerland and beyond.33. Gamble, ‘Putting Civil Rights to a Popular Vote’.34. Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values.35. Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited .36. Hill, ‘Democratic Deficit in the ACT’.37. Butler and Ranney, Referendums.38. See for example: Donovan and Bowler, ‘Direct Democracy and Minority Rights’;

Bowler and Donovan, Demanding Choices; Matsusaka, For the Many or the Few;Gerber, The Populist Paradox; Lupia and McCubbins, The Democratic Dilemma.

39. Kaufmann, Buchi, and Braun, Guidebook to Direct Democracy.40. Papadopoulos, ‘Analysis of Functions and Dysfunctions of Direct Democracy’, 430.41. This indiscriminate count of MDDs excels in Vanhanen’s ‘Measures of Democracy

1810–2008’, which does not take care of the mentioned ‘direct democracy paradox’,and also departs from the risky assumption that plebiscites ‘have usually been held in non-democratic countries’ (Vanhanen, ‘Measures of Democracy 1810–2008’, http://www.

fsd.uta.fi/aineistot/taustatietoa/FSD1289/Introduction_2009.pdf; See also: http://www.fsd.uta.fi/english/data/catalogue/FSD1289/bgF1289e.html) (accessed December 16,2011).

42. A precedent for this methodological choice is provided by Alvarez et al., ‘ClassifyingPolitical Regimes’, in the context of their development of a measure of democracy.They use an indicator of alternation: ‘Whenever a ruling party eventually sufferedan electoral defeat and allowed the opposition to assume office, the regime is classifiedas democratic for the entire period this party was in power under the same rules’

(Alvarez et al., ‘Classifying Political Regimes’, 24).43. There are several indices related to direct democracy but none are useful for this

research. The work of Frey and associates (Frey, Kucher, and Stutzer, ‘Outcome,Process and Power in Direct Democracy’; Frey and Stutzer, ‘Happiness Prospers inDemocracy’; Frey and Stutzer, ‘Happiness, Economy and Institutions’) provides anassessment of how extended democratic rights are perceived among Swiss cantons.The simple fact that they use a non-weighted average as composite index of different instruments of direct democracy explains their intentions not to differentiate amongdirect democratic instruments. We can also mention at least a handful of other examples: Breuer, ‘Costa Rica’s 2007 Referendum’; Gross and Kaufmann, IRI

Europe Country Index; Fiorino and Ricciuti, ‘Determinants of Direct Democracy’;Vatter, ‘Lijphart Expanded’. Nonetheless, none attempts to measure or to weight thedemocraticness of different MDDs, instead they measure ‘how much’ direct democ-

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48. Peterlevitz, ‘Adding Direct Democracy Processes to an Assessment of Political Par-ticipation’; Bu

¨hlmann et al., ‘The Democracy Barometer’.

49. Goertz, Social Science Concepts; Munck, Measuring Democracy.50. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics; Hansen, ‘The Tradition of the Athenian

Democracy’.51. Goertz, Social Science Concepts.52. Altman ( Direct Democracy Worldwide, Chapter IV) provides several examples of

regimes that without satisfying whatsoever the polyarchic minimums use direct decision-making for advancing particular political interests. Similar arguments can

be found in He and Warren, ‘Authoritarian Deliberation’, in regard to Chinese politicsand ‘deliberation’.53. Goertz, Social Science Concepts.54. To construct this data set I relied on ‘C2D-Research and Documentation Centre on

Direct Democracy’, ‘Suchmaschine fur direkte Demokratie’, and ‘Keesing’sRecords of World Events’ (http://www.c2d.ch/; http://www.sudd.ch/index.

php?lang=de; http://keesings.gvpi.net/ (accessed December 16, 2011)), Lissidini,Welp, and Zovatto, Democracia directa en Latinoame rica; Welp and Serdult, Armas

de doble filo; and Renfer, Democracia directa en Argentina, Uruguay y Venezuela.The database includes 360 observations (18 countries from 1990 to 2009). Each obser-vation corresponds to a country-year and the number of times MDDs occurred that year.I have also determined whether the MDD was constitutionally mandated, top-down, or citizen-initiated (with the concomitant division between popular initiatives andreferendums).

55. For example, for the whole period under consideration Uruguay receives the score of 1as it had referendums and popular initiatives since 1989. The constitutional reforms of

1996 did not affect direct democratic rights and practices. On the contrary, Paraguayreceives zeros during these 18 years as no popular initiative, referendum, or even amandated constitutional reform was directly voted by its citizens (this is so despitearticles 121–3 and 290 of the Paraguayan Constitution, which explicitly open thedoor to such instruments).

56. Mainwaring, Brinks, and Perez-Linan, ‘Classifying Political Regimes in LatinAmerica 1945–1999’; Mainwaring, Brinks, and Perez-Linan, ‘Classifying PoliticalRegimes in Latin America 1945–2004’.

57. PNUD, La Democracia en Ame rica Latina; Munck, Measuring Democracy.58. Mainwaring, Brinks, and Perez-Linan, ‘Classifying Political Regimes in Latin

America 1945–2004’; Munck, Measuring Democracy.59. For LAD’s definition and coding criteria see Mainwaring, Brinks, and Perez-Linan,

‘Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America 1945–2004’, 123; for EDI’s defi-

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69. By satisfaction I consider the addition of the percentage of people who answer ‘verysatisfied’ and ‘satisfied’. By support for democracy I consider just those individualswho agreed with the following sentence: ‘ La democracia es preferible a cualquier otra forma de gobierno’. http://www.latinobarometro.org/latino/LATAnalize.jsp(accessed December 16, 2011).

70. As this is the very first step in combining aspects of representative and direct democ-racy, I have also run the combination of components with different weights (80/20 and70/30). The results are notably consistent with the results shown above.

71. Morlino, ‘What is a “Good” Democracy?’, 13 – 14.

72. Verhulst and Nijeboer, Direct Democracy, 12.73. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development .74. Munck, ‘The Study of Politics and Democracy’, 31.75. Sen, Development as Freedom.76. Paradoxically, these preconditions are often considered as consequences of democracy

(Tsai, ‘Does Political Democracy Enhance Human Development in DevelopingCountries?’ ; Moon, The Political Economy of Basic Human Needs; Kaufman andSegura-Ubiergo, ‘Globalization, Domestic Politics, and Social Spending in Latin

America’).77. Collier and Levitsky, ‘Democracy with Adjectives’.78. Munck, Measuring Democracy.79. Goertz, Social Science Concepts.80. Munck, Measuring Democracy, 16; see also Coppedge et al., ‘Conceptualizing and

Measuring Democracy’.

Notes on contributor

David Altman is Professor of Political Science at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica deChile. He works on comparative politics with an emphasis on the quality of democratic insti-tutions, mechanisms of direct democracy, and executive-legislative relations. He is theauthor of Direct Democracy Worldwide (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

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Appendix

Table A1. CI-MDD scores for Latin American countries (1990– 2009).

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

ARG 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0BOL 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75BRA 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25CHI 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0COL 0 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75CRI 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0DOM 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0ECU 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25GUA 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25

HON 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0MEX 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 NIC 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0PAN 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25PAR 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0PER 0 0 0 0 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25SAL 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0URY 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

VEN 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75

Notes: ARG, Argentina; BOL, Bolivia; BRA, Brazil; CHI, Chile, COL, Colombia; CRI, Costa Rica; DOM, Dominican Republic; ECU, Ecuador; GUA. Guatemala;HON, Honduras; MEX, Mexico; NIC, Nicaragua; PAN, Panama; PAR, Paraguay; PER, Peru; SAL, El Salvador; URY, Uruguay; VEN, Venezuela.

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bringing direct democracy back in toward a three-dimensional altman

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