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SUMMARY:V-Dem: measuring democracy - Sharon Crasnow (Norco College/Durham 
 University)
DTSTART:20190307T153000Z
DTEND:20190307T170000Z
UID:TALK112831@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Agnes Bolinska
DESCRIPTION:Indices of democracy (measurement of democracy) raise a variet
 y of concerns. First\, the latent concept of democracy needs to be clarifi
 ed in order for coding to proceed and measures to be determined. Second\, 
 the multiple purposes for which we might seek measures of democracy sugges
 t that multiple measures are needed\, each differently suitable and depend
 ent on the purposes for which they are needed. Questions of aggregation an
 d disaggregation of the components of democracy – many of which differ a
 mong the different indices – depend on decisions about indicators of the
  concept 'democracy' and vary among indices. Third\, the belief that measu
 rement serves only as an intermediate step in the process of testing hypot
 heses limits discussion of the role of measurement in other aspects of kno
 wledge production.\n\nV-Dem (Varieties of Democracy)\, a project that bega
 n roughly 10 years ago\, explicitly addresses many of these concerns throu
 gh greater transparency about methodology and a fine-grained disaggregatio
 n of indicators of democracy. 'We provide a multidimensional and disaggreg
 ated dataset that reflects the complexity of the concept of democracy as a
  system of rule that goes beyond the simple presence of elections. The V-D
 em project distinguishes between five high-level principles of democracy: 
 electoral\, liberal\, participatory\, deliberative\, and egalitarian\, and
  collects data to measure these principles' ("V-Dem project website":https
 ://www.v-dem.net/en/about/). In this talk\, I explore the claims made for 
 V-Dem\, the question of what it means to measure an abstract concept like 
 democracy\, and whether this project can tell us about the measurement of 
 such concepts in the social sciences more generally.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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