Evaluating the Performance of Political Systems—A Critique of Extant Assessment and a Search for Alternatives

摘要

The paper reviews the critique of widely used schemes of evaluating a political system’s performance,namely Polity Project and Freedom House(FH)index,highlighting their ideological bias and methodological problems.The paper then searches alternative evaluation schemes that consider input,processes and output of a political system at the national,subnational and subsystem levels.Based on the review of theoretical and empirical studies across developing and developed countries,the paper suggests a list of indicators measuring political and administrative capacity,policy and regulatory capacity,and the level of socially sustainable development.