Title:      Democratic Compromise:  A Latent Variable Analysis of
Ten Measures of Regime Type

Authors:    Daniel Pemstein, Stephen Meserve, James Melton

Entrydate:  2008-02-07 09:49:06

Keywords:   democracy, measurement, democracy measurement,
regime, regime type, latent variable analysis, Bayesian latent
variable analysis, UDS, Unified Democracy Scores, multi-rater
ordinal probit

Abstract:   Using a Bayesian latent variable approach, we
synthesize a new measure of democracy, the Unified Democracy
Scores (UDS), from ten extant scales. We accompany this new
scale with quantitative estimates of uncertainty, provide
estimates of the relative reliability of the constituent
indicators, and quantify what the ordinal levels of each of the
existing measures mean in relationship to one another. Our
method eschews the difficult -- and often arbitrary -- decision
to use one existing democracy scale over another in favor of a
cumulative approach that allows us to simultaneously leverage
the measurement efforts of numerous scholars.

http://polmeth.wustl.edu/retrieve.php?id=733

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