Measuring Democratization and Detecting State Transitions

In the proposed research, an in-depth analysis of the features presented in six representative international organizations measuring democracy worldwide revealed a sizeable set of significant and complementary indicators that provided the basis for the construction of a common conceptual framework for democratization. The size and variety of the examined datasets overcomes any possible skepticism for data biasing. We also propose a method of combining such complementary or competing indicators using Multiobjective Optimization, in order to increase objectivity. The periodic monitoring of the proposed indicators allows for the detection of State Transitions, especially under alarming conditions. Our aim is to propose an objective tool for policy makers that would eliminate selective interpretation of democracy and its transitions, by allowing political change to be meaningfully understood in its proper perspective using facts and data.


Introduction
Democracy is based on a set of independent and functioning institutions that, in order to ensure the legitimacy and efficiency of democratic operation should inspire confidence to the people (Sarris, 2015) and advocate respect for human freedom, social and individual autonomy. Key elements such as: trust in the institutions, the participation of all 'citizens' in public and electoral processes, protecting the secrecy of the vote and the protection of freedom of expression and personal freedoms, the clear distinction between legislative, judiciary and executive bodies and the efficiency of public administration (Coppedge et al., 2020;Skaaning, 2018) are critical characteristics that contribute to 1 To cite this paper in APA style: Papanikolaou, V., Roussakis, Y. and Tzionas, P. (2020). Measuring Democratization and Detecting State Transitions. HAPSc Policy Briefs Series, 1(2): 51-58. DOI: 10.12681/hapscpbs.26476 2 Vaia Papanikolaou is a PhD candidate at the Department of Special Education, University of Thessaly, Greece. She holds an MBA from the University of Nicosia, Cyprus, and B.Sc. in Sociology, University of Crete, Greece. Her PhD research focuses on the institutional democratization of the modern universities. She has more than 3 years teaching experience as a professor's assistant in teaching Quality Assurance in Higher Education, at postgraduate level in the the objective determination of what is meant by a democratic constitution of a society, something that is independent of the varying social practices.
Based on these theoretical concepts of democracy, it is feasible to measure a country's quality of democratization for a given point in time (Campbell, 2019), especially by using big data, algorithms and artificial intelligence [e.g. in computational sociology (Redden, 2018)]. This provides a new approach to conceptualizing and measuring democratization. Multidimensional and disaggregated datasets that reflect the complexity of democracy as a system of rule that goes beyond the simple presence of elections, are available. And they span all high-level principles of democracy such as the electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian. In this sense, large datasets may capture diverse experiences of democracy worldwide, allowing us to assess their potential relevance across countries and to incorporate them into an expanding body of comparative knowledge on democracy (Blackwell et al. 2018). On the other hand, they allow us to explore the challenges to democratization by conducting research in areas that are highly relevant for policymaking or reform processes (e.g.

'State Transitions').
However, one should be careful in choosing the sources of the data since a certain degree of criticism has been exerted to possibly biased datasets concerning social phenomena [e.g. discrimination, civil rights (Shorey et al., 2016)]. Attempting to combine information from multiple datasets can overcome this skepticism, as indeed is the novelty in the proposed research work.
International specialized organizations have as their main objective the systematic creation and support of specialized, time-spanning databases using variables, indices and indicators and composing global reports that record and highlight the quality characteristics of democracy, both locally and globally, thus, constructing its regulatory conceptual framework. In this way, they contribute to the establishment of the objective and true essence of the concept of 'Democracy' as this is constituted by facts and data. Thus, the difficulties arising by the possible subjective ways of perceiving and interpreting it by the citizens are overcome, while at the same time, the diversity, variety and pluralism of these databases eliminate the risk of selective interpretation of data, a criticism often exercised on them (Bush, 2017).

Varieties for Democracy (V-Dem)
This database defines five fundamental types of Democracy, which are also the main variables measuring its quality: Electoral, Liberal, Participatory, Deliberative and Equalitarian Democracy.
vol. 1 | no. 2 | December 2020 53 Data from 202 countries in the world were collected and studied for the period from 1879 to 2019 (Coppedge et al., 2020). It uses more than 250 indicators measuring Democracy, as well as its additional institutional features. Data comes from official national documents as well as from social scientists' evaluations, regarding formal political practices and de jure compliance to rules.
V-Dem is distinct in several regards in addition to its unique level of disaggregation, by the combination of: historical data extending back to 1900; use of multiple, independent coders for each evaluative question; multiple indices reflecting varying theories of democracy; fully transparent aggregation procedures; and that all data are made freely available.

The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA)
This is a transnational organization involving 158 countries. Published reports, called the 'Global State of Democracy Indices', portray the democratic tendencies of a country both at regional and global level, covering a wide range of different qualitative characteristics of Democracy, over the period from 1975 to 2018, for 158 countries. The data underlying the indices is based on 97 indicators developed by various scholars and organizations (Skaaning, 2018).
The fundamental features of Democracy studied by this organization are five: Representative Government, Fundamental Rights, Checks on Government, Impartial Administration and Participatory Engagement.

Center for Systemic Peace
The research center 'Center for Systemic Peace' has been recording elements of political behavior in countries with a population of more than 500,000, since 1997. In the context of the 'Polity' program a database of codified information was created, based on scientific research with respect to the collection and quantitative analysis of data, in many thematic areas related to the fundamental issues of Political Violence, the Fragility of Governance and their impact on the social development of these countries.
The uniqueness of its conceptual framework lies in the fact that it examines, concurrently, multiple qualitative features of Democracy, focusing mainly on formal governmental institutions rather than on informal expressions of government (Center for systemic peace, n.d.).

Freedom House
The non-governmental organization Freedom House publishes an annual survey entitled 'Freedom in the world', since 1973 (Bradley, 2015). In this report an evaluation on the state of freedom, as it is being experienced by people in different countries is attempted (

Democracy Barometer
It has developed a theoretical framework for this assessment of Democracy Quality, in 52 countries with democratic government, measuring and recording the subtle differences that exist between them.
It allows comparative assessment and provides a critical follow-up of the democratic evolution of these countries over time (Engler et al., 2020). The Democracy Barometer embraces liberal as well as participatory ideas of democracy, illuminating the phenomenon from different perspectives. In order to guarantee the quality of democracy, nine democratic functions need to be fulfilled. Every function is further disaggregated into two components each, which finally, are measured by several sub-components and indicators. The fundamental principles of Democracy explored by the barometer focus on the central concepts of Freedom, Equality and Control.

Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)
The Economist Intelligence Unit's index advocates that measures of democracy that reflect the state of political freedoms and civil liberties are not thick enough. In existing measures, the elements of political participation and functioning of government are taken into account only in a marginal way.
It has compiled since 2006 an index called The Democracy index (Kekic, 2007), with updates for 2008, 2010 and the following years since then. The latest edition is called: 'Democracy Index 2019.A year of democratic setbacks and popular protest'. The report states that the index of Democracy on vol. 1 | no. 2 | December 2020 55 a 0 to 10 scale is based on the ratings for 60 indicators, grouped into five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. Each category has a rating on a 0 to 10 scale, and the overall Index is the simple average of the five category indices.

Combining Indicators and Detecting Transitions
The basic conceptual characteristic features of democracy presented in all databases systems are shown on Table 1, providing a theoretical framework, constructed in the context of this paper, that allows for direct comparisons. Each system provides a unique road map with a distinctive conceptual range at a global level and a large time span, the core of which is the understanding, interpretation Multi-objective Optimization Theory (Emmerich et. al., 2018), is proposed for decision-making based on multiple indicators: Cj. Then, the total (i.e., when all the criteria are considered simultaneously) importance of alternative State of Democracy Ai, denoted as Ai WSM-score , is defined as follows:

i) Weighted Sum Model of complementary indicators between Transition States
For the maximization case, the best Democracy State out of the possible Transition States is the one that yields the maximum total performance value.

ii) Pareto Optimization of competing indicators
If the final Democracy State cannot be improved in any of the indicators without degrading at least one of the other indicators (competing indicators), a Pareto Optimal Solution should be sought for decision-making (Emmerich et. al., 2018).
In mathematical terms, such a multi-objective optimization problem can be formulated as where the integer k≥2 is the number of objectives (Indicators in our case) and the set X is the feasible set of decision vectors (States of Democracy in the present work).
The feasible set is typically defined by some constraint functions. In addition, the vector-valued objective function (the set of Indices values for the specific state in our case) is often defined as f:X→ℝk, f(x)=(f1(x),…,fk(x)) T . An element x * ∈X is a feasible solution; a feasible solution x 1 ∈X is said to (Pareto) dominate another solution x 2 ∈X, if

iii) State Transition detection
Finally, the periodic monitoring of the proposed indicators f(x)=(f1(x),…,fk(x))T would provide clear alarming signals for State Transitions in X (feasible States of Democracy). By combining the power of multiple indicators policy makers can obtain a clear view on the actual state of democracy, based on facts and data.

Conclusion
The size and variety of the examined datasets on Democracy overcomes any possible skepticism for data biasing and selective interpretation. Additionally, the proposed approach for combining vol. 1 | no. 2 | December 2020 57 complementary and competing indicators from different data sets avoids subjectivity, filtering, generalization and distortion of concepts. Constant monitoring and updating of the values of the proposed indicators provides an efficient way to detect possible State Transitions and to produce strong alarm signals to the influential policy makers.