Undocumented indicator weights can quietly turn dimensions into necessary conditions.

Evidence

It is important to recall that the weights of each indicator in table 4.1 are arbitrary. Nowhere do Jaggers and Gurr describe how they arrived at them, or what the rationale for them is. In practice, they have arranged the weights so that de facto each dimension is in fact necessary for a state to be a “coherent” democracy. A coherent democracy is de- fined as a score of seven or more on the sum of the indicators. For example, the maximum possible on the indicator of “constraints on the executive” is four; while the maximum total on the indicator of “political competition and recruitment” is six. In short, it is impossible to be scored as a coherent democracy without at least a modest score on each indicator. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts, 680

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the concept-measure consistency theme; directly parallels the weighting-as-necessity argument at para 679.