The internal relationships of the dimensions of democracy: The relevance of trade-offs for measuring the quality of democracy

Definitions of democracy almost always refer to dimensions. An important question arises about the internal relationships between them. This article presents arguments in favor of the ideas of mutual reinforcement as well as of intrinsic tensions or trade-offs. A well-known example of these kinds of trade-offs is the complex relationship between liberty and equality. Surprisingly, trade-offs are not reported when measuring democracy. The article identifies the basic methodological problem and develops a new strategy for evaluating the indicators which makes trade-offs visible in the empirical research. The proposal combines two measurement strategies, arguing that in addition to established measurements of democracy, a further measurement to assess trade-offs should be employed.