Conceituar, operacionalizar e agregar: como as democracias são mensuradas?

Abstract

How do different theoretical readings of democracy generate different measurement metrics? This work aims to describe the process of democratic measurement in the face of the polysemy and observational difficulties of the political regime. Democracy indices serve the purpose of classifying and qualifying political regimes, and consequently, assist in the development of empirical research as a whole. However, this task becomes essentially challenging when considering the plurality of definitions and the observational difficulties of political phenomena as a whole. Methodologically, this is a descriptive research, as we describe and discuss the process of forming democracy indices, using secondary data as a source. From the perspective of methodological procedures, we use descriptive statistics to analyze the materialization of various conceptual democratic perspectives. To better explore our object of investigation, we propose a comparative case study between Nicaragua, Brazil, and Costa Rica, under various conceptual approaches, starting from the indices of Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), Democracy Matrix (DMax), and Freedom House (FH). We are motivated by the need to understand the main strengths and weaknesses of democracy indices, specifically regarding their reliability and validity in empirical research. As a result, we highlight that the various approaches to democracy can lead to different empirical results, which is not a problem in itself, but demands attention to the state of interchangeability of these measures. We understand that, when endowed with convergence and interchangeability, the various measures of democracy can be consciously used to explain the specificities of the political engineering of the phenomenon, even with the observational and conceptual polysemy difficulties in theory; and consequently, provide accurate diagnoses about the state of the quality of democracy.