1. Introduction: Description of the project: defining, measuring then assessing the quality of our democratic republic. Research question: What is the quality of democracy in the US? 2. Research Design -Remembering Eastons definition as all those actions more or less directly related to the making of binding decisions for a society, identify the institutions that channel action into authoritative or binding decisions. – Recall the design principles of political equality in the representation phases, and popular sovereignty reflected in the decision-making rules of government. Describe how you measure political equality and popular sovereignty in institutions. – Considering the institutions that perform the functions of representation (inputs) and the making of authoritative decisions/policy (outputs)how well does the US system perform those functions? – Variable selection: Select variables from the V-Dem dataset provided. Select variables that, at a minimum, measure 1) the democratic quality of elections and 2) the democratic quality of decision rules. You can use to existing index scores, or you may choose a number of specific types of institutional variables that measure more specific traits, but you need TWO SCORES to analyze that measure inputs (elections and representation) and outputs (decision rules). Consider, and write about, the tradeoffs involved in measuring these institutional values, and why you make the research design decisions that you do. – Analysis – – Summarize your measures of democratic quality. What are the measures of central tendency (average scores), what countries occupy that space, and how does the US compare? Which countries should the US be compared to? Why does that matter? How does the US compare to other countries we typically call democratic on your scores? How well do these scores measure democracy? Are there other features of the US political system that tell us more about the quality of democracy here? Provide examples of that data and information and provide some contextual analysis of the quality of democracy in the US. Be sure to include at least one table that summarizes quantitative information in a way that clearly communicates your point.
