Pole A: Democracy score 0
Those who are governed choose and replace those who govern. Common argument for it: a government's mistake is corrected at the next election, without a rupture.
POLITICAL POSITION · DIMENSION 2 OF 12
Representation: democracy or autocracy
Representation is the dimension that records who a person thinks should choose and hold rulers to account.
What it is
Representation is the dimension that records who a person thinks should choose and hold rulers to account. At the Democracy pole, power comes from free and periodic elections, with an opposition, a press and courts able to limit those in government; at the Autocracy pole, power is concentrated in one person or group that does not depend on competitive voting and accepts no external check.
What the dimension covers
- competitive elections and alternation in power
- term limits
- oversight of government by courts, parliament and the press
- decisions taken by leaders or experts without a vote
The two poles
0 · DemocracyAutocracy · 100
Pole B: Autocracy score 100
Concentrated and stable power that does not depend on the electoral cycle. Common argument for it: fast and long-term decisions, without the pressure to please voters every term.
How the instrument measures it
The Evidence instrument (schema evidence-pol-1) records this dimension as a number from 0 to 100: 0 is the Democracy pole, 100 is the Autocracy pole. The number comes from your answers to the questionnaire or from a result imported from another instrument by URL; either way it is a self-assessment, computed in your browser, and nothing reaches the server without an explicit action from you. With no answer for this dimension, it stays unknown (UNKNOWN), never 50.
| No. | Statement | Agreeing points to |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Major national decisions are only legitimate if they go through elected representatives or a public vote. | Democracy |
| 14 | In a crisis, a leader with strong authority solves problems better than a parliament that has to negotiate. | Autocracy |
| 26 | Independent courts and press should be able to constrain a government, even one with broad popular support. | Democracy |
| 38 | Choosing rulers for proven technical competence would be better than choosing them by election. | Autocracy |
Formula p = (resposta - 1) / 4 if agreeing points to Autocracy; p = 1 - (resposta - 1) / 4 if it points to Democracy; placar = 100 * media(p)
There are 4 original statements, with opposite directions to reduce the effect of agreeing with everything. Answers run from 1 to 5 (1 Strongly disagree, 2 Disagree, 3 Neither agree nor disagree, 4 Agree, 5 Strongly agree); "Don't know" does not score. Each answer becomes a position between 0 and 1, the score is the mean position times 100, and confidence combines coverage (how many of the 4 statements scored) and consistency (how far answers point the same way): high from 0.75, medium from 0.50.
In the Evidence portable format, this dimension is the democracy parameter of the profile URL. Scale, evidence states and limitations are in the instrument method; the terms are in the glossary.
Why it is a separate dimension
It differs from State power: an elected government can restrict individual liberty a great deal, and an unelected one can interfere little in private life. It differs from State structure, which is about the level of government, not how rulers are chosen.
Compare with State structure and State power.
Frequently asked questions
How do academic projects measure democracy in countries?
Projects such as V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) rate countries with expert surveys and publish yearly indices from 0 to 1. This dimension does something else: it records a person's preference, not a country's regime.
Is a score close to Autocracy an accusation against the respondent?
No. The score describes answers to statements on a date, it is a self-assessment and it classifies no one. Evidence does not assign a score to a real person without a documented public source.
What does a score of 50 on Representation mean?
That the answers ended halfway between Democracy and Autocracy, through balance or through a mix of answers in both directions. It is not the same as moderation or the political center, and it says nothing about the other 11 dimensions.
Is my result sent or published?
No. The computation runs in your browser, nothing reaches the server without an explicit action from you, and the result page is not indexed by search engines. Political opinion is sensitive personal data under Brazil's LGPD (art. 5, II, and art. 11).
Literature and references
- DemocracyStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: what democracy is and the justifications of democratic authority.
- V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy)Dataset with hundreds of democracy indicators by country and year, from expert coding.
- Electoral Democracy Index, Our World in DataV-Dem electoral democracy index series by country.
Reference readings on the topic. None of them validates the Evidence instrument, and no text, question or weight was copied from them.
Conceptual sources of the instrument
How power is legitimized: elections, checks by independent institutions and pluralism (democracy) or concentrated, lightly checked authority (autocracy).
Other dimensions
- Related dimensionState structureFederal · Unitary
- Related dimensionState powerSecurity · Liberty
- PreviousState structureFederal · Unitary
- NextState powerSecurity · Liberty