| Description: |
This paper asks: What is the best analytic strategy for identifying democratic quality in various countries? It first suggests a definition of quality in terms of procedure, content and result; it provides a definition of good democracy, and focuses on empirical qualities mentioned in major normative approaches to democracy. These include the rule of law, electoral accountability, inter-institutional accountability, participation, competition, freedom, equality and responsiveness. The core of the paper defines those qualities and discusses problems of implementation; recurrent patterns of the undermining of democratic qualities; connections between qualities; the need to explain them adequately; and, as a last step, an overall assessment of the democratic qualities of a country.
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