ABSTRACT
Minimalist definitions have built on Joseph Schumpeter's concept of democracy as a system for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote. The Efforts to measure the qualities of democracy can lead in two directions: toward aggregation or disaggregation. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) claims that the thicker definition of democracy makes it a more robust measure than earlier attempts like freedom house or the polity index. Similar to the EIU Democracy Index, the Bertelsmann Democracy Status Index moves beyond the more procedural criteria employed by freedom house and polity. Many valid conceptual and methodological critiques have been leveled against both the long-standing and newer indices of democracy. New and more rigorous measurements will generate deeper insights and more sensitive means for comparing specific attributes of democracy across countries, particularly if these indices can be sustained annually over time.
