Varieties of US State-Level Democracy

• In Event: Putting State Policy in Context: Federalism, Polarization, and Populism

Abstract

While political science has made great strides in measuring democracy across countries (Coppedge et al. 2018), there has been little investigation of variation in democratic performance across subnational jurisdictions. As recent U.S. elections have dramatized, there is considerable variation between states in the freeness, fairness, and equitability of elections and other components of democracy. This project draws on advances in comparative politics to develop a comprehensive measure of democracy in the U.S. states over time. The measure is hierarchically structured, from macro-level core concepts of democracy, to meso-level components, to micro-level quantitative and qualitative indicators. Some of the components include: free and fair elections; equal access to ballot box for citizens; government’s protection of civil liberties; citizen access to information; punishments for misconduct in office; fairness in geographic boundaries of districts; judicial independence and impartiality; and independence of law enforcement from political bias. The project updates and greatly extends prior research on state-level democracy (e.g., Hill 1994), providing scholars a new opportunity to systematically investigate the correlates, causes, and consequences of democracy across the U.S. states.

Authors

• Jake M Grumbach, Princeton University

• Jamila D. Michener, Cornell University

• Philip B. Rocco, Marquette University