Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 09/2008

The Quality of Democracy in Latin America: Another View

Daniel H. Levine, Jose E. Molina

November 2007

The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies

Abstract

Studies of democracy in Latin America have gone beyond attention to transitions and consolidation to a concern with developing reliable comparative assessments of the quality of democracy. This requires conceptualization of democracy in multi-dimensional terms; quality of democracy is a continuum that varies along a range of related dimensions: electoral decision, participation, responsiveness, accountability, and sovereignty. Working with these dimensions, an index of quality of democracy in Latin America is developed that provides for comparison between countries and for a richer analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the quality of democracy within each country. Appropriate data include expert assessments, aggregate statistics, and opinion surveys.