Comparing National Democratic Performance: Freedom House and Bertelsmann Political Transformation In

I. Introduction: Do democracy rankings agree?

Task:

There are several different efforts that try to compare countries’ level of democracy. This assignment will expose you to some of those efforts, and give you a chance to see if they tend to agree on which countries are more democratic and which less democratic.

Look at the following two projects that measure national democratic performance.
A.Freedom House: 100 point freedom scale (included with the assignment))
B.Bertelsmann Political Transformation: scale (1-10) included with the assignment. Remember you want the SI Democracy Status)

Review and Compare the two scoring systems for democracy. (Read the Methodology Sections of the two reports: Freedom House and Bertelsmann’s Political Transformation Index)

1. What is actually measured in each of these two scales?  Do they measure similar things about level of democracy as you understand it, or are they measuring very different things? Remember they both claim to measure political democracy to some degree.

2.Look at the countries in your list that are scored on both scales. Be sure to record what countries you picked. It’s okay if the indices used a different years. (Freedom House produces descriptive reports for countries in addition to the numeric scores. You are not required to use these, but reviewing a few might be helpful for understanding the rankings)

3.Download and compare the scores and rankings of your countries on the two indices. (You should probably use a spreadsheet to organize this.) Do the different scales basically agree in the ordering of your groups countries?  If not, how and why do they differ.  
Remember, each of these measures uses a different numbering scale. You will need to take that into consideration to make a meaningful comparison. One way is to use a scatterplot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scatter_plot)

Here is a suggested structure for the paper
I.Introduction: Do democracy rankings agree?
II.Measures of Democracy: two approaches
a.Freedom House
b.Bertelsmann
c.Commonalities and key differences
III.Agreement and disagreement in scoring
a.Countries selected for comparison
b.Comparative rankings. Do the two sources generally agree or not?
IV.Conclusions

There is a lot of information to squeeze into the 5 pages, so your first draft may be longer.

Please turn in paper, any Figures or Tables, and (in a separate file) the spreadsheet containing the countries you selected and the two different democracy scores for each country.  Remember that figures and tables should adhere to standards of good visualizations (see below).  If possible, please paste the figures or tables into the text of the paper in addition to submitting them as separate files.

Remember: key points to note from Figures and Tables must be discussed in the paper, and the reader needs to be directed to all Figures and Tables in the text. There is no need to cite the source for the specific democracy scores, but if you do reference an explanation of what an index means or how it is constructed, you should include a citation and reference to that material.