ABSTRACT
The minimal definition of democracy suggests that a regime has at least universal, adult suffrage; recurring, free, competitive and fair elections; more than one political party; and more than one source of information. Delegative democracy, sometimes referred to as populist democracy, also falls well within the scope of this analysis, having overcome the necessary threshold. The institutions and mechanisms of representative democracies are the main objects of the analysis of the quality of democracy. Freedom and equality, however they are understood, are necessarily linked to accountability and responsiveness. The line of reasoning set out brings us to a closer analysis of the constituent dimensions of democratic quality, the essential conditions for their existence, and the numerous and related problems associated with the empirical study. Horizontal accountability holds when governors are responsible to other institutions or collective actors that possess the expertise and power to control the behaviour of the governors.
