Subjective measures of liberal democracy

Using democracy in empirical work requires accurate measurement. Yet, most policy and academic research presupposes the accuracy of available measures. This article explores judge-specific measurement errors in cross-national indicators of liberal democracy. The authors evaluate the magnitude of these errors in widely used measures of democracy and determine whether their results replicate during a 17-year period (1972 to 1988). Then, they examine the nature of these systematic errors, hypothesizing that three different processes-(a) the information available for rating, (b) the judges' processing of this information, and (c) the method by which a judge's processing decisions are translated into a rating-could create error The authors find that for the 17-year period from 1972 to 1988, there is unambiguous evidence of judge-specific measurement errors, which are related to traits of the countries. In the conclusion, the authors discuss the implications for democracy research and for other subjective measures.