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How to Measure the Rule of Law
Author(s) -
Voigt Stefan
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
kyklos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1467-6435
pISSN - 0023-5962
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6435.2012.00538.x
Subject(s) - bivariate analysis , measure (data warehouse) , ideal (ethics) , rule of law , law , econometrics , computer science , economics , mathematics , data mining , political science , statistics , politics
Summary I argue that the rule of law consists of many dimensions and that much information is lost when variables proxying for these dimensions are simply aggregated. I draw on the most important innovations from various legal traditions to propose a concept of the rule of law likely to find general support. To make the concept measurable, an ideal approach is contrasted with a pragmatic one. The pragmatic approach consists of eight different dimensions. I show that the bivariate correlations between them are usually very low, evidence that more fine‐grained indicators of the rule of law, rather than a single hard‐to‐interpret one, are necessary for its measurement. The paper presents a list of desirable variables that could improve the measurement of various aspects of the rule of law.