Measuring democracy

We've posted on this before, and it's always interesting.

How do we assess if a country is a democracy or not, or is more democratic than another? Or, in other words, how do we assess the “democraticness” of a country, or the level or quality of its democracy, if any? It’s obvious from this way of phrasing the question that my preferred system of measurement will not be binary or dichotomous. I want to have a measurement system that gives me more than merely an indication of the presence or absence of democracy in a country. I want a scale of “democraticness”, ranging from total absence of any elements of democracy to a perfect democracy, with as many intermediate levels as possible. How this can be done is another matter. More...