• Methodology

Methodology

This paper seeks to respond to the need to bring measurement back in to political science. It does so through an in-depth discussion of the methodological issues involved in the measurement of democracy, a key concept in political science and, more broadly, in the social sciences.

More concretely, it offers a detailed exposition of the methodological choices followed in the construction of a new index of democracy, the electoral democracy index (EDI). As the discussion shows, the generation of data is an extremely complex aspect of the research process that involves an iterative process of theorising and testing, along with a range of consequential choices, which are seldom appreciated and seriously discussed.

Thus, by explaining and illustrating the issues involved in the generation of indices, that is, aggregate data, the authors seek to encourage further discussion of the methodology of measurement, and to promote a more self-conscious approach to the generation of data, within political science.

The paper is organized in terms of the three broad challenges that must be tackled in the generation of indices: conceptualization, measurement and aggregation In each section discusses the theoretical considerations and empirical tests that informed the multiple choices involved in data generation.
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