The Quality of Democracy : Analyzing a liberal framework through a case study of Bogota

Abstract: In 2011, Levine & Molina contributed to the research within the field of the quality of democracy by creating a framework focusing on the quality of the political process. The purpose of this study is to further contribute to the theoretical discussion of the quality of democracy by empirically applying Levine & Molina’s model of quality of democracy on a case: Bogota, the capital of Colombia. The data was collected through a field study in Bogota through semi-structured interviews with elites. The first research question aims at deciding what quality the democracy in Bogota has, if analyzing it through Levine & Molina’s five main dimensions. The second question asks if their model captures the central dimensions needed for concluding the quality of democracy if contrasting their dimensions to other societal factors lifted as important in Bogota by the informants.   The conclusions show that Bogota appears to have a rather low quality of democracy. Its strongest dimension is electoral decision, while the weakest one is participation. When comparing Levine & Molina’s dimensions to the surrounding society in Bogota, their framework can mainly be concluded to be including the main aspects for being able to evaluate the quality of democracy in a given place. However, it appears obvious that a strong and active emphasis on surrounding circumstances is central for drawing any conclusions of the quality of the political process.