DEMOCRACY AND
DICHOTOMIES:
A Pragmatic Approach to Choices
about Concepts
David Collier and Robert Adcock
Giulia Mallone
1. INTRODUCTION
2. CONCEPT FORMATION
3. EXAMPLES OF GENERIC JUSTIFICATIONS
for gradations
for dichotomy
1. EXAMPLES OF SPECIFIC JUSTIFICATIONS
study of events and subtypes
empirical distribution and normative evaluation
“bounded wholes” and sharper differentiation
1. CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION
Should scholars engaged in comparative research on democracy treat the distinction
between democracy and nondemocracy as a dichotomy, or in terms of gradations?
What conceptual reasonings justify the different approaches?
Dichotomy: political systems composed of different dimensions but still to be treated
as a single entity, that can be either fully democratic or not at all. It involves the
establishing of a single cut-point to represent the lowest level of democracy accepted.
“Half-democratic” cases are not acknowledged.
 More fine-grained information might be underutilized
 How to update the cut-point with the evolving of the theoretical
understanding and of the empirical knowledge? How to set it in the first place?
Gradations: democracy is always a matter of degree. It detects incremental effects
and specificities of the systems, without the bias of a pre-determined cut-point.
 What procedure to use for aggregating observations in scales?
Pragmatic approach: While constrained by broader scholarly understanding of a concept's
meaning, specific methodological choices are better understood in light of the theoretical
framework, purpose and context of the research. Concepts and operationalizations may evolve
with changes in the goals and contexts.
CONCEPT FORMATION
G. Sartori:
A classificatory reasoning, based on the setting of cut-points, is
necessarily the first step in concept formation → Dichotomies are
fundamental.


Intermediate positions:
CONTRADICTORIES
vs
alive – dead;
democracy - not
OBJECT CONCEPT
“bounded whole”
→DICHOTOMY
CONTRARIES
big – small
vs
PROPERTY CONCEPT
characteristic that cases
display to various degrees
→GRADED TREATMENT
→ More productive to establish an interpretation justified by its
suitability to the immediate research, rather than trying to build a
definitive interpretation of a concept's meaning.
GENERIC JUSTIFICATIONS
Gradations

Bollen: democracy as “the extent to
which the political power of the elite
is minimized and that of the non-elite
is maximized”. Democracy as a
continuous concept, that regimes
display in different degrees.
→ measurement error is less with a
graded approach, assuming
democracy to be a continuous
concept.

Dahl: democracy as an ideal type
that regimes approach to various
degrees. The classificatory treatment
is an undesirable simplification of the
wide space created in between the
two extreme dimensions.
Dichotomies

Sartori: “what makes democracy
possible should not be mixed up with
what makes democracy more
democratic”.
→ gradations only as a second step, to
be applied to cases previously
classified as democratic through the
use of an initial dichotomy. On the
basis, idea of democracy as
“bounded whole”.

Przeworski: ambiguity of
classification not due to the
approach but instead to
inappropriate scoring procedures or
insufficient information.
Some regimes are more democratic
than others. Where offices are not
contested, they should not be
considered democratic to any
degree.
SPECIFIC JUSTIFICATIONS
1/3
Focus on events
O'Donnell & Schmitter: transition as the interval between one political regime to
another → calls for dichotomous approach to establish a threshold.
Bollen & Jackman: how to establish conceptual equivalence across different
historical contexts? Where to locate a single starting date for democracy?
Responses: adopt a context-specific approach (ex. Compare regimes with
regards to the norms of a relevant time period); focus on two or more successive
thresholds → introduces gradations. Dichotomy still applicable to cases of abrupt
processes of democratization.
Focus on subtypes
O'Donnell: “delegative democracy” as a subtype of democracy, specifically
defined as a regime that is above a dichotomously established threshold of
democracy but with some further differentiating attribute. Inclusion in a subtype
conditioned to the belonging to a larger and dichotomously defined set of
democratic countries.
SPECIFIC JUSTIFICATIONS 2/3
Empirical distribution of cases
Where a gap is observed between cases of democracy and nondemocracy, a
dichotomy may provide a more adequate summary of the empirical contrasts,
while a graded approach can successfully evaluate whether a gap exists.
Gradation is more suitable to capture a highly uniform distribution.
Huntington: democracy treated as dichotomous, with few intermediate cases.
More recently observed that due to the growing diffusion of democratic
institutions, democracy itself is becoming more differentiated.
Diamond: proportion of intermediate cases has doubled between 1990-1997.
Normative evaluation
O'Donnel & Schmitter: “procedural minimum” version of democracy as normative
point of departure. “Political democracy” composed of free and fair elections,
universal suffrage, protection of political and civil liberties (from Latin American
and Southern European experiences).
→ dichotomous distinction.
Dahl: dichotomy is morally inadequate because it fails to see the empirical
variety → not embedded in a specific historical episode, the approach is more
flexible.
SPECIFIC JUSTIFICATIONS 3/3
The idea of bounded wholes
Sartori: systems characterized by constitutive attributes that are either present or
absent. If one of these defining attributes is not present, the other ones change
their meaning.
When a freely elected government lacks effective power to rule, is the attribute
of competitive elections to be considered as meaningful?
→ supports the bounded wholes approach.

When in many new democracies the elected president governs with
authoritarian undercurrents, is his being an elected leader completely irrelevant?
→ rejects the bounded wholes approach.

Sharper differentiation
Dahl and Diamond: combine gradations with named categories, applying to
marginally democratic types names that convey further information (ex. “partially
illiberal democracy”).
Collier & Levitsky: use “diminished subtypes”, with adjectives that cancel part of
the original meaning (ex. “male democracy” lacks of women's suffrage).
→proliferation of subtypes may lead to conceptual confusion.
CONCLUSION
There is no single, “best” meaning for all concepts.
Justifications for the use of a dichotomous or graded
approach:
 have to focus on specific arguments about the goals
and context of research
 should be as specific as possible
 may change according to the evolution of goals and
context
 should allow scholars to choose, from a range of
alternatives, the most suitable context-specific meaning,
and still to recognize the validity of other decisions in
other contexts.