Perhaps such a system would work better if scores were on a scale of 10, but even then you have to wonder about the inclusion of some of the criteria, such as economic freedom. What does that mean? Does a country that supports free enterprise (i.e. respect of private property, businesses, etc.) but not free markets (i.e. protects its market with tariffs or quotas) have economic freedom or not according to this ranking? Is a country that supports religious freedom but not political rights (for instance Tunisia) freer than one that discriminates against some religions but has more political freedom (for instance Egypt)? Does religious freedom just mean tolerating other religions, or also accepting religion in politics? Does a state that officially controls the majority religion and religious institution (most Arab states) really have religious freedom? Does it matter if you have elections and political parties if the scope of political debate is severely limited? Does the economic development of a country matter for its democratic nature — for instance, isn’t Mali poorer than Egypt but at least in some ways more democratic than Egypt? These questions lead me to think that it’s not worth quantifying democracy, at least not in this way. Rankings are most likely to be used for political purposes than anything really constructive.
That being said, it remains desirable to have a system to compare countries. I would choose to focus on political and civic rights over economic and social ones. But perhaps the most important sense of how democratic a country is not its actual state of affairs but its apparent willingness to mend its ways and the progress it is making — in other words, a dynamic indicator based on whether there’s been improvement in each criteria rather than the actual status of affairs. One could also include a reference to the gap political expectations (based on government promises and opposition demands)on democratization vs. what’s actually been carried out. On such a system, Gulf states that have had elections in the last few years would probably score well, whereas Egypt and Morocco would not do so well. That may be unfair, but as a measure of political commitment to democratization, it may be more useful.
Bearing in mind that quantifying something as complex as democracy is always a problem, there are better and worse ways of going about it, and looking at the citations for that article it sounds like someone did this in a real hurry. The mixing up of “good governance” indicators with “level of political freedom and competition” indicators is a huge problem (and conveniently lifts Saudi Arabia above the bottom place ranking it deserved with that string of zeroes). Looks like a very political effort to include ec development and “religous freedom” (as defined by US) in measures of progress in the Middle East, downgrading the importance of actual political freedom.
The problem with a lot of these indicators is that they are based on perceptions, even when empirical indicators are possible to identify – e.g. picking scores for “freedoms” rather than using the two turnover rule, or degree of executive accountability, or laws permitting formation of pol parties, or level of competitiveness in elections, etc. As anyone who reads democratization theory knows, it doesn’t tell you much to know whether the head of state was elected or not elected, or whether pol parties are permitted or not (dictators are technically “elected” with 99% of the vote most of the time). Look at the sleight of hand involved in rating based on whether or not leaders and legislators are elected, vs. listing on the table as “free election.” And if media freedom, religious freedom and human rights are “easy to quantify,” well, give this person the friggin Nobel.
Transparency Int’l’s corruption index is similarly useful, but last I remember it was still built around the perceptions of MNC executives. Even in surveys of American public opinion about democratization, people will regularly group all developing countries together based on perceptions – so Egypt is rated as democratic as India.
Yahya Sadowski had put together a democracy-freedom index at PFC some years ago when I worked there briefly, and did a much better job even though he admitted it was a very tricky exercise. Perhaps they still have some info on their website about it.
Minor quibble – this report was put out by a think-tank and Middle East Quarterly is (as you’ve rightly pointed out) a policy rag, not a peer-reviewed journal, so perhaps should be placed in the category of “US policy” and not “academia”?
True, it’s not academia… although unfortunately there are academics among its contributors. But it’s not US policy either — at least I’d like to think they’re not that influencial on actual policy!