Methodological Sub-Nationalism and Measures of Quality of Democracy

Regional authorities have been long recognized as autonomous actors, developing and executing their own policies and representing their own interests on higher levels of government (Hooghe et al. 2016). Yet, the fact that sub-national levels of government impact on patterns of democratic consolidation or backsliding of a country is something not often be taken into account when evaluating the qualities of democracy. In this paper, we aim at developing specific methodological and analytical instruments for evaluating how democratic regions have developed different institutional structures and how these variations can impact on their public policy capabilities. We start by mapping the existing dedicated indicators for measuring the quality of democracy at subnational level. We then take stock and compare a broad range of primary (existing) data concerning the dynamics of political regimes at different territorial levels (including also World Bank, Policy IV, Freedom House, Quality of Government, RAI, Democratic Decay, and WZB Democracy Barometer datasets.