How to Measure the Rule of Law

I argue that the rule of law consists of many dimensions and that much information is lost when variables proxying for these dimensions are simply aggregated. I draw on the most important innovations from various legal traditions to propose a concept of the rule of law likely to find general support...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:MAGKS - Joint Discussion Paper Series in Economics (Band 38-2009)
Main Author: Voigt, Stefan
Format: Work
Language:English
Published: Philipps-Universität Marburg 2009
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Online Access:PDF Full Text
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Summary:I argue that the rule of law consists of many dimensions and that much information is lost when variables proxying for these dimensions are simply aggregated. I draw on the most important innovations from various legal traditions to propose a concept of the rule of law likely to find general support. To make the concept measurable, an ideal approach is contrasted with a pragmatic one. The pragmatic approach consists of eight different dimensions. I show that the bivariate correlations between them are usually very low, evidence that more fine-grained indicators of the rule of law, rather than a single hard-to-interpret one, are necessary for its measurement. The paper presents a list of desirable variables that could improve the measurement of various aspects of the rule of law.
Physical Description:26 Pages
ISSN:1867-3678
DOI:10.17192/es2024.0019