Participatory democracy index

Quick info
Data type	Numeric
Scale	Metric
Value labels	Not applicable
Technical name	polnat_sys_partipdem_vdem
Category	Regime characteristics
Label	Participatory democracy index
Related indicators	Electoral democracy index Liberal democracy index Deliberative democracy index Egalitarian democracy index

The "Participatory democracy index" is part of V-Dem's high level democracy indices capturing features of democracy at the most abstract level. The "Participatory democracy index" in particular captures to what extent the ideal of participatory democracy is achieved. It ranges from low (0) to high (1).

It is conceptually defined as follows: "The participatory principle of democracy emphasizes active participation by citizens in all political processes, electoral and non-electoral. It is motivated by uneasiness about a bedrock practice of electoral democracy: delegating authority to representatives. Thus, direct rule by citizens is preferred, wherever practicable. This model of democracy thus takes suffrage for granted, emphasizing engagement in civil society organizations, direct democracy, and subnational elected bodies. To make it a measure of participatory democracy, the index also takes the level of electoral democracy into account." (Coppedge et al. 2019, 40).

Coding rules

The index is composed of several components and lower-level indices applying V-Dem's measurement model (Pemstein et al. 2019) which in turn are indices built from a number of indicators. For the index aggregation formula see Coppedge et al. 2019, Appendix A.

Bibliographic info

Citation:

• Coppedge, Michael, Staffan Lindberg, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jan Teorell. 2016. "Measuring high level democratic principles using the V-Dem data". International Political Science Review 37 (2): 580-593. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512115622046

Related publications:

• Coppedge, Michael, Staffan I. Lindberg, Svend-Erik Skaaning and Jan Teorell. 2015. "Measuring High Level Democratic Principles using the V-Dem Data". V-Dem Working Paper No. 6. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.
• Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, M. Steven Fish, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Lührmann, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Agnes Cornell, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Valeriya Mechkova, Johannes von Römer, Aksel Sundtröm, Eitan Tzelgov, Luca Uberti, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2019. "V-Dem Codebook v9". Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.
• Pemstein, Daniel, Kyle L. Marquardt, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Juraj Medzihorsky, Joshua Krusell, Farhad Miri, and Johannes von Römer. 2019. "The V-Dem Measurement Model: Latent Variable Analysis for Cross-National and Cross-Temporal Expert-Coded Data". V-Dem Working Paper No. 21. 4th edition. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.

Misc

Project manager(s):

• Nils Düpont (A01)

Data release:

• The indicator is included in WeSIS rev. 1

Revisions:

• 2019.10 Initial upload for WeSIS rev. 1

Sources

• Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, M. Steven Fish, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Lührmann, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Steven Wilson, Agnes Cornell, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Nina Ilchenko, Joshua Krusell, Laura Maxwell, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Josefine Pernes, Johannes von Römer, Natalia Stepanova, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2019. "V-Dem Country-Year Dataset v9". Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemcy19