Contestation and participation: Concepts, measurement, and inference

Vanessa Alexandra Boese and Matthew Charles Wilson
Additional contact information
Vanessa Alexandra Boese: University of Gothenburg, Sweden; WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany

International Area Studies Review, 2023, vol. 26, issue 2, 89-106

Abstract: Contestation and participation are commonly viewed as two main constituent dimensions of electoral democracy. How exactly have these two dimensions been conceptualized and measured in the literature? Are they empirically observable and do they matter for democratic development and stability? This article answers the first of these questions and considers their implications for the second by reviewing the literature on these two dimensions. We discuss three issues that affect conclusions about dimensions of democracy and their relevance for understanding democratic development: First, conceptual ambiguities—substantive overlap between the two concepts—obscure the meanings of each of the two dimensions. Such ambiguities led to a second issue, which is a concept-measurement mismatch. The conceptual contributions were never really met with an empirical equivalent that would allow us to properly measure the two dimensions. Scholars continue to invoke theoretical understandings from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, but represent them using measures that were not explicitly concerned with measuring them, which presents the third issue of concept reification. As a result of these three issues, inferences about how democracy has developed and its relevance for democratic stability or for transitions to democratic rule is potentially obscured. Based on these issues, we provide three suggestions for future research concerning the concepts of contestation and participation.

Keywords: Contestation; participation; concepts; measurement; inference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/22338659221120970 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:intare:v:26:y:2023:i:2:p:89-106

DOI: 10.1177/22338659221120970

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Area Studies Review from Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().