Institutionalized democracy - Governance & partnership - Development outcomes - African Development Indicators



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Democracy is conceived as three essential, interdependent elements. One is the presence of institutions and procedures through which citizens can express effective preferences about alternative policies and leaders. Second is the existence of institutionalized constraints on the exercise of power by the executive. Third is the guarantee of civil liberties to all citizens in their daily lives and in acts of political participation. Other aspects of plural democracy, such as the rule of law, systems of checks and balances, freedom of the press, and so on are means to, or specific manifestations of, these general principles. We do not include coded data on civil liberties. The Democracy indicator is an additive eleven-point scale (0-10). The operational indicator of democracy is derived from codings of the competitiveness of political participation using the following weights: Polity IV Project: Dataset Users’ Manual 14
Authority Coding Scale Weight
Competitiveness of Executive Recruitment (XRCOMP):
(3) Election +2
(2) Transitional +1

Openness of Executive Recruitment (XROPEN):only if XRCOMP is Election (3) or Transitional (2)
(3) Dual/election +1
(4) Election +1

Constraint on Chief Executive (XCONST):
(7) Executive parity or subordination +4
(6) Intermediate category +3
(5) Substantial limitations +2
(4) Intermediate category +1

Competitiveness of Political Participation (PARCOMP):
(5) Competitive +3
(4) Transitional +2
(3) Factional +1

This "institutional democracy" indicator follows a logic similar to that underlying the Polity I analyses. There is no "necessary condition" for characterizing a political system as democratic, rather democracy is treated as a variable. Polity IV Project, Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2006, annual, cross-national, time-series and polity-case formats coding democratic and autocratic "patterns of authority" and regime changes in all independent countries with total population greater than 500,000 in 2006 (162 countries in 2006; SPSS and Excel data; PDF codebook). Note: Individual Polity IV Country Reports can be examined by checking the website http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity06.htm; changes made during the most recent update (2006) are listed in an Excel file in http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/inscr.htm Source: Center for Systemic Peace with reference to the Polity IV Web site at www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm
Institutionalized democracy - Governance & partnership - Development outcomes - African Development Indicators (2008)

Rank

Country

Value

1Mauritius10
2Comoros9
3South Africa9
4Botswana8
5Ghana8
6Lesotho8
7Senegal8
8Sierra Leone8
9Burundi7
10Benin7
11Liberia7
12Niger7
13Madagascar7
14Mali7
15Kenya7
16Zambia7
17Malawi6
18Namibia6
19Mozambique6
20Guinea-Bissau6
21Democratic Republic of the Congo6
22Nigeria4
23Djibouti3
24Algeria3
25Ethiopia3
26Angola2
27Burkina Faso2
28Tanzania2
29Guinea1
30Chad1
31Togo1
32Zimbabwe1
33Cameroon1
34Uganda1
35Central African Republic1
36Tunisia1
37Egypt1
38Mauritania0
39Swaziland0
40Gabon0
41Morocco0
42Eritrea0
43Republic of the Congo0
44Libya0
45Rwanda0
46Equatorial Guinea0
47Gambia0
48Sudan0
Country Comparison Graph