Meaning: The indicator measures to what extent a country enacts political participation rights by law and respects them in practice.
Source: Welzel's (2013: 254-263) political participation rights index'' based on Freedom House'spolitical rights'' as well as Cingranelli/Richards' ``empowerment rights''. Freedom House political rights are inverted and then standardized into a range from minimum 0 to maximum 1.0. CIRI empowerment rights are also standardized into a range from minimum 0 to maximum 1.0. Then the average of the two is taken to measure political participation rights. Measures exist on an annual basis from 1981 to 2010 for most countries in the world.
Scaling: Index scores range from 0 for completely absent or disrespected political participation rights to 1.0 for their full presence and respect, with proper fractions for intermediate positions.
Links: Data sources, rescaling procedures and replication data are meticulously documented in the Online Appendix to Welzel's (2013) Freedom Rising at www.cambridge.com/welzel (p. 72). Test statistics documenting this index's superior validity in comparison to alternative democracy measures are reported in Welzel (2013: 267-271).
Note: the missing code (-99) has been recoded to missing (.).
Type of variable: Continuous
Last updated by source: 2014-03-01
| Dataset | No. Countries |
|---|---|
| Standard time-series: | 192 |
| OECD time-series: | 36 |