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 ********************************************************** Political Methodology E-Mail List Editors: Melanie Goodrich, <[log in to unmask]> Delia Bailey, <[log in to unmask]> ********************************************************** Send messages to [log in to unmask] To join the list, cancel your subscription, or modify your subscription settings visit: http://polmeth.wustl.edu/polmeth.php **********************************************************