Measuring local democracy: A quantitative approach

Democracy is an essential concept in contemporary history, its definition and meaning has been subject to academic discussion. Such an important idea has been treated from numerous approaches, but the importance of local (and rural) function of democracy has been diminished. Authors like Geoff Eley, Robert M. Fishman and John Markoff have worked on new approaches to democracy, with the idea that democracy is the outcome of daily struggle within local scales. It is the almost routine politics and attitudes that define the progress or setback of democracy. Nevertheless, the most important measures of democracy (Freedom House, V-Dem, Democracy Index…) ignores local reality. Most of its measures focus on institutional variables showing a lack of local institutional variables. This kind of democracy indexes can be useful for comparative politics and allows diachronic analysis on democracy, that could be an interesting tool for scholars that study democracy, local history, and rural history, but also for local policymakers who usually works with scarce information about the topic. Therefore, I have been working the last year on the creation of a tool that allows the measurement of local democracy as my PhD thesis. The thesis will be finished after testing the tool in four towns in Andalusia, Spain. As for now, it is in design stage, so the paper would be about the variables needed to measure local democracy and how to implement it. In such a wide approach to democracy there are numerous variables to consider, including topics as: • Institutional design and functioning of local administration. • Press functioning. • Civil society and local association movement. • Civic culture and attitudes. • Inequality: Access to healthcare, education, resources…