Electoral aspect of the indexation of political system’s institutional development in the context of democratization’s estimation
The development of democracy indices in political science, caused by political, primarily institutional, transformations in transit countries is an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of the relevant political, administrative, economic and other changes, to rank countries according to the received parameters. Construction of such indices with attention paid to the institutional aspects is made by different methodologies, e. g. on the basis of data from expert interviews or quantitative data on the activity of political institutions. If to outline general trends in creating indexes of democratic development, the criteria for evaluation of the political regime are often related to the electoral process, the presence of corruption, civil society, rule of law, censorship, market economy etc. In the article it is chosen for assessment the electoral process as the minimum criterion for democratic functioning of political system. There is outlined the role of assessment of electoral process in the measuring of indexes of political system’s institutional development, created for the classification of political regimes, particularly in transition countries. In this context the author has compared indexes for Ukraine, for the period 2000-2011. The electoral aspect of political regime is necessary for determination of its type on a scale democracy - authoritarianism. Although it affects the results of comprehensive indexes, however it requires an estimation of such features as: the rule of law, human rights and liberties, functioning of civil society, democratic governance at the state and local levels, rotation of elites, democratic formation of the executive power, anti-corruption policy and so on. These criteria, in various combinations are considered in research projects, with a focus on certain features of the functioning of political institutions. However, the assessment of the electoral process as a necessary formal criterion of the type of political regime, available in all indices and rankings of countries aimed at a comprehensive study of democratic change, allows considering their dynamics and vectors of the changes taking place in political systems.