ABSTRACT

Much of the literature on quality of democracy is case study-oriented and focused on nation states. Theoretical work and, in particular, comparative empirical research on the quality of local democracy are less advanced. This paper contributes to our understanding of how democracy works from below. It develops a conceptual framing and employs a multidimensional index of the quality of democracy across all 278 municipalities in mainland Portugal by focusing on procedural dimensions of democratic performance at three levels of legitimacy: input, throughput, and output. Regression analysis is then used as a preliminary test of the usefulness of these measures of quality of local democracy and to uncover associations between them and a range of political and socioeconomic factors. The results suggest that municipalities led by independent mayors, with larger populations and higher levels of multiculturalism are likelier to be associated with ‘better’ local democracy.

摘要

许多关于民主质量的文献都是以案例研究为导向的，并且侧重于民族国家。理论工作，特别是关于地方民主质量的比较实证研究进展较慢。这篇论文有助于我们理解民主是如何从底层运作的。它开发了一个概念框架，并采用了葡萄牙大陆所有 278 个城市的民主质量多维指数，重点关注三个合法性层面的民主表现的程序维度：输入、吞吐量和输出。然后使用回归分析初步检验这些衡量地方民主质量的措施的有效性，并揭示它们与一系列政治和社会经济因素之间的关联。结果表明，由独立市长领导的市政当局，