ABSTRACT
Democracy is a form of government in which the people rule. Dahl identifies government's responsiveness to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals, as a key characteristic of democracy. The measurement of democracy has become its own branch of political science surrounded by an ongoing debate about the best ways of devising and combining indicators. The leading figure of the New Right, Friedrich von Hayek, distinguishes between liberalism and democracy. In this view democracy is desirable as a mechanism for ensuring that the majority will decide what the law should be. In the debate about the relationship between capitalism and democracy, the liberalist tradition maintains that only a capitalist system can provide the necessary basis for liberty and democracy. There are several studies that attempt to measure the degree of democracy in a large number of countries using Dahl's concept of democracy as a starting point.
