Foundational democracy theories emphasize equality alongside liberal or electoral ideals that have dominated political science research on regimes, democratization, and democratic survival. This paper introduces egalitarian democracy—a system ensuring equal protection of rights across all citizens—and develops measures for it using new indicators from the Varieties of Democracy project. These indicators assess resource distribution enabling full citizen participation in politics.
The approach focuses explicitly on equality rather than just procedural aspects like voting or basic freedoms, allowing analysis that better captures democratic theory's rich potential.
Data & Methods
* New indicators drawn from the Varieties of Democracy dataset
* Measures tracking both rights protection and resource accessibility for political engagement
Key Findings
* Egalitarian democracy provides a more comprehensive theoretical framework than traditional liberal or electoral approaches
* These new measures better capture how democratic systems function across diverse populations
Why It Matters
The analysis demonstrates that prioritizing equality in understanding democracy leads to richer insights, potentially transforming future empirical work on political regimes.
| Democracy For All: Conceptualizing and Measuring Egalitarian Democracy was authored by Rachel Sigman and Staffan I. Lindberg. It was published by Cambridge in PSR&M in 2019. |
