Polity data series

Scoring chart

Scores for 2018

Criticism

The 2002 paper "Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy" claimed several problems with commonly used democracy rankings, including Polity, opining that the criteria used to determine "democracy" were misleadingly narrow.

The Polity data series has been criticized by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting for its methodology and determination of what is and isn't a democracy. FAIR has criticized the data series for Americentrism with the United States being shown as the only democracy in the world in 1842, being given a nine out of ten during slavery, and a ten out of ten during the Jim Crow era. The organization has also been critical of the data series for ignoring European colonialism in Africa and Asia with those areas being labeled as no data before the 1960s. FAIR has also been critical of the data series' connection to the Central Intelligence Agency. Max Roser, the founder of Our World in Data, stated that Polity IV was far from perfect and was concerned at the data series' connections with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Seva Gunitsky, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, wrote in The Washington Post where he stated that "Polity IV measures might be appropriate for research that examines constraints on governing elites, but not for studying the expansion of suffrage over the nineteenth century". Gunitsky was critical of the data series for ignoring suffrage.

References

References

1. (2003). "Correlation Versus Interchangeability: the Limited Robustness of Empirical Finding on Democracy Using Highly Correlated Data Sets". Political Analysis.
2. (14 May 2019). "Despite global concerns about democracy, more than half of countries are democratic".
3. Hensel, Paul R.. (2010). "Review of Available Data Sets".
4. Högström, John. (2013). "Does the Choice of Democracy Measure Matter? Comparisons between the Two Leading Democracy Indices, Freedom House and Polity IV". Government and Opposition.
5. (2016). "Measuring high level democratic principles using the V-Dem data". International Political Science Review.
6. (2021). "Conceptualizing and Measuring Autocratization Episodes". [[Swiss Political Science Review]].
7. Vaccaro, Andrea. (2021-03-16). "Comparing measures of democracy: statistical properties, convergence, and interchangeability". European Political Science.
8. Boese, Vanessa A. (2019-06-01). "How (not) to measure democracy". International Area Studies Review.
9. (2021). "Polity".
10. [http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/Canada2010.pdf Polity IV Country Report 2010: Canada]
11. "Polity IV Annual Time-Series, 1800-2018".
12. (2019-06-02). "INSCR Data Page".
13. Gerardo L. Munck, Jay Verkuilen. (February 2002). "Conceptualizing and measuring democracy: Evaluating Alternative Indices". Comparative Political Studies.
14. (May 16, 2016). "Vox's CIA-Backed 'Democracy' Standard Is OK With Slavery and Women Not Voting". [[Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting]].
15. (June 23, 2015). "How do you measure 'democracy'?". [[The Washington Post]].