The Pursuit of Quality: Assessing Democracies… to Save Democracy?

Mauro Tebaldi, Marco Calaresu

Department of Political Sciences, Communication Sciences and Information Engineering, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy.

DOI: 10.4236/ojps.2016.61001                

Abstract

For over a decade, there has been the widespread awareness that western democracies need to be reformed if they want to successfully cope with the crisis that they are experiencing; also, ultimately, if they want to be able to increase their own level of quality. The aim of this article is to illustrate why and how the quality of a democracy can (and indeed, must) be assessed with the purpose of improving it. Passing through a reflection on the state of the art of a major sector of studies in the international scientific scenario, and by presenting an original typological proposal to classify these same studies, we maintain that the crisis of democracy may be overcome, first of all, by improving the assessment skills of scholars and, secondly, by transforming the knowledge on democratic quality into useful knowledge for citizens.

Keywords

Quality of Democracy, Democracy, Crisis, Legitimacy, Efficiency

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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