Democracy-Dictatorship Index
Based on the regime binary classification idea proposed by Alvarez in 1996,[5] and the Democracy and Development (or DD measure, ACLP dataset) proposed by Przeworski et al. (2010), Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland developed a six-fold regime classification scheme, resulting what the authors called as the DD datasets.
[1] " Based on a "minimalist" theory of democracy, the index relies on rules regarding the existence of competitive elections.
The authors acknowledged that the last rule is more complicated to implement, but stated that it helps researchers to control potential errors and removes subjective judgement from the classification.
No alternation in power Democracies are classified by the rules in which executives can be appointed or removed and can be either presidential, mixed or semi-presidential, or parliamentary.
The classification depends on the rules outlining the relationship between a country's government, legislative assembly (often called the legislature), and head of state.
The required majority needed to remove the sitting government varies between countries but is termed a vote of no confidence.
The phrase "fixed term" indicates the once the head of state is chosen, they serve a known and a limited number of years before another election is held, and they cannot be removed from the office in the meantime via a vote of no confidence.
In the former, for example, the President must appoint as Prime Minister the leader of the largest party in parliament, who has three days to gain the confidence of a majority thereof.
Some countries, such as Sweden, instead charge another person entirely with choosing the head of government, such as the presiding officer of the legislative assembly.
Keep note that the head of state, chief executive, government, and legislatures can have their official names be seemingly contradictory to this classification.
A semi-presidential (mixed) democracy has a government that needs the majority of support from a legislature to exist and whose head of state is popularly elected for a fixed term.
