Classification of Countries According to Public Perception of Democracy

Abstract

The term democracy is derived from Greek demokratia, which is a composite of Demos (people) and Kratos (rule, power). Demos-kratos corresponds to ?power to people? meaning that people decide the laws that will govern their land. Conventionally democracy is a system of government based on popular sovereignty. However, it is seen that the forms/principles of democracy have been applied differently by communities throughout the history. Therefore it can be said that socioeconomic, political and constitutional structures of communities might form the democratic way of life.To evaluate the levels of democracy of countries various measures used in the literature (e.g. democracy index). These measures are calculated considering pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political culture, and performance of non-political dimensions of countries.The literature review indicates that most of the studies examine the relation between democracy index and socio-economic variables. However, public perception of democracy is important as well.In this study, the importance given to main characteristics of democracy of 59 countries? have been evaluated considering World Values Survey data (2010-2014). Firstly, a new dataset has been defined using central tendency measures and the relationship between main characteristics of democracy has been studied. Afterwards, countries have been classified according to main characteristics of democracy. The classification process has been considered using both classical and robust multivariate statistical approaches. Lastly, the similarities and differences between country groups, and the place of Turkey among these countries have been examined.