The State and the People: growing diversity of relationship models

The article substantiates the need to develop a universal index of institutionalized competition and participation to be applied for assessing political regimes in different states. This need is dictated by changes in societies and channels of social communication produced by modernization and political development. In political science, it is customary to consider such processes in the context of democratization, but, in this case, a value-neutral assessment is offered. It is based only on “hard” statistical data (primarily electoral) and analysis of the constitutional design of political systems. Since a national parliament and the universal active suffrage can be found in the vast majority of countries around the world, such an assessment might be close to universal.
It is proposed to include one variable in the index to assess political participation – data on turnout in national elections as a share of a country’s total adult population. Political competition is analyzed basing on three primary and four additional variables. The primary variables are the levels of competition in the formation of the executive branch and the parliament, respectively, as well as the role of the legislative branch in the formation of the executive one. Additional variables include duration of the minimal electoral tradition, availability (or absence) of cases of two or more changes of power as a result of elections in country’s history, availability (or absence) of cases of deviation from constitutional norms during formation or removal from power (for example, coups d’état), availability (or absence) of cases of one person holding power for a period of three or more electoral cycles.
Such an index is comprehensive and universal; its development might make it possible to assess and compare institutional conditions of political participation and competition in the vast majority of countries in the world.

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