Democracy measures contradict the necessary-condition definitions scholars endorse.

Evidence

The conceptual, qualitative, and philosophical literature on democracy virtually always discusses democracy in terms of secondary-level dimensions that are necessary and jointly sufficient for democracy. In political science, Dahl is a good place to start for a tradition that continues still through almost all conceptualizations of democracy. However, when it comes to numeric measurement, almost no one follows through on the implications of this necessary condition conceptualization of democracy. In short, the measurement model is fundamentally inconsistent with the conceptual model. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 286

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: a piece tracking how the most-studied concept in political science is measured by models its own theorists would reject.
• SHARE: Pitch this to a comparativist friend who works with Polity/V-Dem data — the conceptual-measurement mismatch is exactly their fight.