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Objectivity of Measurement in Political Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2025

Sharon Crasnow Open the ORCID record for Sharon Crasnow [Opens in a new window]
Sharon Crasnow*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Norco College , Norco, CA, USA
*
Email: sharon.crasnow@gmail.com
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Abstract

A recent dispute in political science raises issues about the objectivity of measures of democracy. Political scientists Little and Meng argue that democracy indices using country experts as coders show a greater degree of democratic backsliding than do measures that are objective. They worry that this discrepancy may reflect coder bias. I distinguish three aspects of objectivity and offer a reconceptualization of objectivity as coherence objectivity. I argue that coherence objectivity is better suited for evaluating measures of social science concepts like democracy than the understanding of objectivity implicit in Little and Meng’s discussion.

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Type
Contributed Paper
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 92 , Issue 5 , December 2025 , pp. 1086 - 1095
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Philosophy of Science Association

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