ABSTRACT
With the discussion of correlation analysis now in mind, we are ready to turn to the principal important concept of this chapter: political empowerment. Recall that our principal objective concerning democracy is to devise a single multidimensional measure that reflects the extent to which citizens within a society are politically empowered to pursue their interests and to protect their rights through free and extensive opportunities for political participation. If, as we have argued, democracy is basically a derivative of four primary properties—the scale of institutional democracy (POLIT97), the scale of liberal democracy (CIVIL97), the scope of institutional democracy (PARCOMP), and the scope of liberal democracy (PARREG)—how can we construct a single measure that incorporates these properties into an operational definition that allows us to devise a reliable and valid measure of political empowerment?
