Going Historical: Measuring Democraticness before the Age of Mass Democracy

Most studies of democratic developments are limited to the period after World War II. However, political regimes varied according to different aspects of democracy long before the establishment of modern liberal mass democracies. We come down strongly in favor of collecting disaggregate and fine-grained historical data on democratic features. Based on a distinction between competition, participation, and constraints, we discuss previous attempts at historical measurement and address the specific challenges that pertain to scoring political regimes in, first, the “long 19th century” and, second, medieval and early modern Europe.Carl Henrik Knutsen received financial support for this research from the Research Council Norway (pnr 240505). Jørgen Møller and Svend-Erik Skaaning received financial support for this research from the Danish Council for Independent Research (11932). The authors would like to thank John Gerring, Andrej Kokkonen, Gerardo Munck, and Jan Teorell for valuable comments and suggestions