Exploring the Interchangeability of Rule of Law Measures

Abstract

We have demonstrated that the explosion in interest in the rule of law in recent decades has not been accompanied by a consensus about how the concept should be defined, and that the recent increase in the availability of cross-national data has therefore created a situation where scholars employ very different measures of the rule of law in their studies. This situation need not be a problem if scholars carefully opt for the rule of law measure which best accords with their definition and if their conclusions clearly state what has in fact been explained or used as an explanatory variable. Indeed, if analysts conscientiously choose their measures with reference to what Goertz (2006) terms concept-measure consistency, the present lack of consensus may — as we pointed out in the introductory chapter — be beneficial for research as more aspects of the rule of law are scrutinized.