Starting points and turns in the development of democracy indices:
aligning measurement to reality and theory
2.民主的起点以及逐渐发展的指标:对于现实和理论的匹配度
Robert Dahl′s work is widely recognized as a transmission belt between normative
democratic theory and the empirical study of democratization (Lauth 2000: 22; Munck
2000: 17). With his work Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (1971) he laid the
groundwork for most democracy measurement tools that emerged until the end of the
20th century. The most fundamental element of this work is that Dahl distinguishes twodimensions of democratization: Opposition, public contestation, political competition orliberalization on the one hand and inclusiveness or participation on the other hand (he
uses these terms interchangeably, Dahl 1971: 4-7)
罗伯特.戴尔的研究被公认为是规范的民主理论与民主化实证研究之间的传送带。他的主要成就是政治多元化,即参与制和反对制,他的研究为大多数民主奠定了衡量标准,且这种标准一直沿用至20世纪末次。这项研究的基本内容是戴尔将民主分为两个维度:一方面即反对,公开争论,政治竞争或自由化。另一方面是包容或参与。
Dahl and his followers developed the democracy measurement tools in the
context of waves of democratization (overviews over democracy indices are provided by
Lauth 2000: 227-317, 388-410; Goertz 2000: 112-113, Munck 2000: 14). Their main goal
was to investigate the conditions which favor or impede the transformation from non-
democratic to democratic regimes (Dahl 1971: 1). Therefore, measuring the degree by
which existing political systems resemble the ideal of democracy6 represents only a first
step for this explanatory goal.
戴尔和他的下属是在一波又一波的民主化的大背景下,不断完善发展民主化的衡量标准(洛特2000年提供了一组民主化的总结数据:227-317,388-410;考特兹2000年更新:112-113,蒙克2000年更新:14)他们的主要目标是调查从非民主政治进化到民主政治的有利与不利条件(戴尔1917:1)。因此,衡量现有政治制度的民主化程度仅仅是向理想民主化迈出的第一步。
In other words, democracy became to be conceptualized and measured as the
dependent variable for an endeavor that primarily aimed to reveal the conditions and
causes for successful transformations from authoritarian to democratic regimes. This
goal is most obvious in the index that became to be used primarily by social scientists
because of its long historical record: the Polity Index (initiated by Gurr 1974) captures
most countries of the world since 1800 and includes not only an “institutionalized
democracy” index but also an “institutionalized autocracy” index, which are then
integrated into the combined polity score (Marshall and Jaggers 2000)
换句话说,民主已经完全被概念化或是度量某种因变量的努力,旨在揭示由独裁成功转化到民主制条件与原因。此目标十分明显是由于长期的历史记载中它们经常被社会科学家所用到:政治指数(1974格尔提供的数据表明)放眼世界大多数国家自1800年后,不仅有“制度化的民主”指标也有“制度化的独裁”指标,它们汇集在一起成了联合政体参数(马歇尔与贾格尔2000)。
What the Polity Index shares with most other important indices (e.g. Coppedge
and Reinicke 1990; Alvarez et al. 1996), but also with indices which were developed in
order to serve policy assessment or evaluative purposes – like the Freedom House
Index7 or the Economist Democracy Index8 – is the fact that a liberal understanding of
democracy became absolutely predominant. This can be seen as a departure from Dahl′s
approach, yet Dahl himself stimulated this development. Arguably, the two dimensions
that Dahl (1971) distinguished – liberalization/contestation and inclusion/participation
– resemble the two most important traditions in democratic theory: liberalism and
republicanism (Held 2000).
那么政体指数与其他重要指标所共享的是什么(例如,考配哲和雨琦1990;阿尔瓦雷斯1996)除此之外,对于指数的研究也是为了达到服务政策评估和评价的目的,比如民主自由之家的指数7或是经济学家民主指数8,毋庸置疑,对于民主化的自由理解变成了主流。我们可以认为这脱离了戴尔的研究方法,然而戴尔自己加速了其理论的发展。可以说戴尔最著名的两个维度:自由与争论,包容与参与,就像民主理论最重要的两个传统:自由主义与共和主义。
In Polyarchy, he did not refer to these traditions, but the affinities are very
obvious. The examples that Dahl provided for illustrating the two dimensions of
democratization set the stage for his followers to focus on the liberal dimension. Dahl
described Britain and Switzerland as highly developed systems of public contestation
which were highly exclusive – until the end of the 19th century (the former country) and
at the time of writing (the latter country) –, but argued that “[p]robably few people
would challenge the view that the Swiss regime is highly democratic […although] the
feminine half of the Swiss population is still excluded from national elections” (Dahl
1971: 5). As an example for a system that is highly inclusive, but not liberalized, he
pointed to the USSR
对于多元政治的研究上,他并没提及太多传统,但是却表现出了极大的亲和力。戴尔举了一个例子来说明正是民主的两个维度奠定了其下属重点研究的自由维度。戴尔认为英国和瑞士是公众争论的高度发达地区,并且具有极强的排他性——主要指的是19世纪末(前期的国家)以及截止到写出结论的时候(后期的国家),但有少数人质疑瑞士政府是否达到了高度民主,因为半数瑞士女性仍然不能参加全国选举。他举了一个高包容度,低自由性国家的例子,那就是苏联。
Given this starting point, the political contexts of the last quarter of the 20th
century (until the end of the 1980s the Cold War between East and West and then the
collapse of the communist regimes) and the dominance of liberalism in political
philosophy (with John Rawls as an almost unavoidable point of reference for political
philosophers) and in normative as well as in empirical theories of democracy (Held
2000; Dryzek and Dunleavy 2000), it does not come as a surprise that the most
recognized indices have focused (almost) exclusively on the liberalization/contestation
dimension (Coppedge 2000: 28)
鉴于这个出发点考虑,在20世纪最后一个季度的政治大背景下(直到20世纪80年代末的东西方冷战,紧接着共产主义政权的崩溃),政治哲学中的自由主义居于主导地位(约翰.罗尔斯成为了政治哲学家们最广泛的争论的焦点)既具有规范性又具有民主的经验论,所以公众只关注自由维度和争论维度就一点也不奇怪了。
Of course, in political practice and normative theory, we can detect dissenters
within the field of democracy measurement. Vanhanen (1990), Arat (1991), and
Hadenius (1992) still included the inclusion/participation dimension, but, with the
exception of Vanhanen, it became a minor element in these indices. Although
Vanhanen′s index is especially interesting in respect to our purpose (the inclusion of
immigrants, see below), its simplicity (he measures each dimension – competition and
participation – with one single indicator) has received a lot of critique (e.g. Hadeniusand Teorell 2000) and is out of touch with the dominant trend to make democracy
measurement tools more differentiated and complex.
当然,在政治实践与规范领域中,我们不难推测出民主领域之内的反对者。万哈内(1990)阿瑞特(1991)和哈迪斯(1992)还考虑了参与度,但万哈内是个例外,他的研究成了这些指数中最微不足道的部分。尽管万哈内的研究指数最符合我们的期待(包括移民等,具体见下文)简言之(他用单一指标测量每一个维度——竞争与参与)但遭到了许多批评,因为与日渐分化复杂的民主衡量度这一主流趋势渐行渐远。
The quality turn
The last few years have witnessed what can be called turns in the field of democracy
measurement. The first turn can be called the quality turn (e.g. Altman and Pérez-Liàn
2000; Diamond and Morlino 2000; for an overview see Munck 2000). It starts with the
following proposition: “The question is no longer whether a political system can be
considered a democracy or not. Instead, researchers focus more and more on assessing
the quality of established democracies” (Bühlmann et al. 2000: 520). The proponents of
this quality turn argue that the major existing indices are not sensitive enough for
measuring the subtle differences among established democracies and that they are
based on a too minimalistic concept of democracy. Therefore, new and more fine-
grained measurement tools are necessary.
质变
过去几年我们见证了什么可以称之为民主领域的转变。第一次转变可以称之为质变(例如2000年奥特曼与彼得研究;戴蒙得与墨霖诺2000的研究,默克2000年做了概述)。始于以下议题:“我们不再关注这个政治系统是否民主,而是研究者越来愈多的关注已建立民主国家的评估质量。”质变论支持者们认为我们已有的指数不足以衡量民主国家之间的微妙差异,并且他们的民主概念都过于简约。因此,新型的,精密的测量手段是很必要的。
In consequence, the Democracy Barometer (DemBar), clearly the theoretically
most sophisticated and empirically most ambitious approach within the quality turn,
builds on divergent democratic theories (liberal and participatory theories are
mentioned explicitly, but egalitarian theories clearly play a role as well), and consists of
a concept that includes three major dimensions (called principles: freedom, equality and
control)10, three components for each dimension (called functions: individual liberties,
rule of law, public sphere, transparency, participation, representation, competition,
mutual constraints and governmental capacities), and about 100 indicators selected
from a large collection of secondary data.
结果看来,“民主晴雨表”显然是基于不同民主理论的质变研究中,理论最复杂,经验最有效的方法(自由和平等理论尤其被提到,同时平等理论同样发挥重要作用),三个维度共同组成了一个概念(称之为原则:自由,平等,以及控制)每个维度有三个组成成分(称之为功能:个人自由,法治,公共环境,透明度,参与度,代表力,竞争力,相互约束力和政府能力),从大量的辅助数据中选出了大约一百个指标。
The DemBar started with measuring the quality of 30 so-called blueprint
countries between 1995 and 2000 (continuously rated as full-fledged democracies by
Freedom House and Polity) and draws its normative thresholds (minima and maxima)
empirically on the basis of best and worst practices. Recently, both its temporal and
geographical scope were expanded to cover 70 countries from 1990 to 2000 (Merkel and
Bochsler et al. 2000a). In contrast to most other approaches within the quality turn, theDemocracy Barometer does not make a fundamental distinction between determining
the existence of democracy and measuring its quality (Munck 2000: 8), but it is clearly
Euro-centric both in respect to the range of normative theories it takes into account and
in respect to determining the thresholds. Furthermore, the conceptual architecture and
especially the rules of aggregation are based on the idea of an “optimal balance” between
the functions and principles of democracy (Bühlmann et al. 2000: 528)
这个“质变晴雨表”开始测量了从1995年到2000年之间30所谓“蓝图国家”的民主品质(“蓝图国家”指连续被评为成熟的民主自由的国家与政体)还基于最好与最差的实践基础上划分了规范的准入标准(即最大值与最小值)。最近,从1990年到2000年其时间和地理范围扩展到了70多个国家(默克尔与巴池勒2000年提出)。与质变的大多数方法不同,“民主晴雨表”出现于20世纪它并不能在决定民主存在以及衡量其品质之间做一个基本的区分,但是它明显考虑到了以欧洲为中心的规范理论,还涉及到了准入标准的决定。此外,概念框架也同样重要,尤其是基于功能和民主原则之间的“最优平衡”的聚合原则。
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