Measuring Democracy: Why the Numbers Don’t Agree

Democracy is a powerful idea, but measuring it is far more complex than it appears. In this episode, we unpack Kenneth Bollen’s influential 1980 article, which challenged the way political scientists construct democracy indices.

Bollen argues that many widely used measures mix unrelated concepts — such as political stability or voter turnout — leading to misleading conclusions about democracy’s relationship with development, inequality, and social outcomes.

He proposes a more rigorous, statistically validated index focused exclusively on political liberties and popular sovereignty.

This episode explores why these distinctions matter, how poor measurement has shaped decades of scholarship, and what Bollen’s work reveals about the tension between elite power and genuine democratic participation.

Understanding democracy requires understanding how we measure it — and what those choices reveal about our assumptions.

Reference

Bollen, K. A. (1980). Issues in the comparative measurement of political democracy. American Sociological Review, 45(3), 370–390.

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