Democratizing Democracy Assessment: A Deliberative/Participatory Perspective

The aim of the paper is to examine the possible contribution of a deliberative democracy perspective to the comparative assessment of democracy at the levels of both conception and methodology. Comparative assessment of the quality of democracy across nations is a major topic in comparative politics. The majority of these assessments are in the form of quantitative indexes/rankings, while some present qualitative alternatives (e.g. the State of Democracy offered by IDEA). Despite some recent efforts (e.g. the V-Dem), a deliberative perspective is mostly lacking in this field. The paper starts with a metatheoretical analysis of the existing frameworks of democracy assessment, with the aim of demonstrating the links between the conceptions preferred and methodologies employed. Based on this analysis, the paper demonstrates how a deliberative conception of democracy would improve assessments by offering a more comprehensive, theoretically better grounded and normatively justified basis. A participatory methodology, based on deliberative principles and innovations (such as Deliberative Polling), is offered as a remedy for the widely criticized shortcomings of existing indexes. By offering an inclusive process, a participatory assessment reflects the judgment of the citizens of the country assessed, provides a more powerful incentive for dialogue and debate on possibilities of improving the level of democracy, and facilitates the representation of cultural differences.