Database of Liberal Democratic Performance, 1970-1998

The data arose from an inquiry into liberal democratic performance, understood as the delivery of liberal democratic values, or how far liberal democratic governments achieve in practice the values to which they subscribe in principle. Normative inquiry established that liberal democracy is founded on the principles of liberty and equality, which are achieved in practice through the operation of eight values: the legal values of civil rights, property rights, political rights and minority rights; and the institutional values of accountability, representation, constraint and participation. Twenty-one quantitative indicators of liberal democratic performance from a variety of sources were selected as proxy measures for these eight values. Data were collected for 40 countries (both new and old liberal democracies) for the years 1970 to 1998. The disaggregated structure of the database aimed to provide a range of scores for each country across different liberal democratic values, rather than subsuming them into a single 'democracy index'. These data are being used to investigate four main issues: (1) the extent to which there has been a 'third wave' of democratisation; (2) the comparative performance of old, established liberal democracies; (3) the relationship between constitutional design and liberal democratic performance; (4) and the relationship between economic development and liberal democratic performance. The data were primarily used descriptively, rather than for causal analysis. In order to 'ground' the data and check its plausibility, the data were supplemented with more detailed qualitative material on particular countries and issues. Overall the research aimed to provide a global comparative depiction of liberal democratic performance.