@techreport{8f5b3b6448d14220901506954652e9c6,
title = "Measuring Democracy - Eight indices: Polity, Freedom House and V-Dem",
abstract = "The paper is an empirical study of eight democracy indices and income. The aggregation problem for these indices is large, and thus the gray zone of measurement uncertainty is wide. The indices have no natural scale. Even the top anchor of full democracy is treated differently. In addition, the indices are conceptually different, use different scales, etc. However, they are still highly correlated. Income and all eight indices have one and only one common factor, which is the Democratic Transition, except in the OPEC/MENA sample. Within-project indices are even more correlated. Thus, the details of the assessments used by each project are more important than the conceptual differences. A country-by-country comparison is made of Polity and the Polyarchy index after it is converted to the Polity scale. Many countries are treated differently by the indices. The difference between the two is an estimate of the measurement uncertainty for democracy indices. It is almost three Polity points.",
keywords = "Democracy indices, Aggregation problem, Democratic transition",
author = "Martin Paldam",
year = "2021",
month = aug,
day = "9",
language = "English",
series = "Economics Working Papers",
publisher = "Institut for {\O}konomi, Aarhus Universitet",
number = "2021-10",
type = "WorkingPaper",
institution = "Institut for {\O}konomi, Aarhus Universitet",
}