The Democracy Ranking relies on the following conceptual formula for quality of democracy:

Quality of Democracy = (freedom & other characteristics of the political system) & (performance of the non-political dimensions).

The Democracy Ranking model refers to one political dimension and five non-political dimensions, which are: (1) gender (socio-economic and educational gender equality); (2) economy (economic system); (3) knowledge (knowledge-based information society, research and education); (4) health (health status and health system); (5) environment (environmental sustainability). To every dimension different indicators are assigned, therefore the dimensions behave as indicator-based. All indicators are transformed to a value rage of “1” to “100”, where “1” represents the weakest (poorest) and “100” the strongest (best) value.
The Democracy Ranking aggregates the following dimensions with the following weights:

Ranking Model

For more details see:

Campbell, David F. J. (2008). The Basic Concept for the Democracy Ranking of the Quality of Democracy. Vienna: Democracy Ranking.
Download: A4 | Letter (PDF)

Further reference: Campbell, David F. J. / Miklós Sükösd (eds.) (2002). Feasibility Study for a Quality Ranking of Democracies. Vienna: Global Democracy Award.
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