David Collier and Steven Levitsky’s original “Democracy with Adjectives” article (1997) offered a useful corrective to Sartorian thinking about conceptualization, and the new revised version further clarifies its contribution. There is a crucial difference between identifying a diminished subtype (moving from democracy as attributes “A and B and C” to “A and B and not C”) and moving up the ladder of abstraction (from democracy as attributes “A and B and C” to “A and B and either C or not C”). Diminished subtypes are more precise and do not necessarily increase the extension of a concept. This chapter offers a critique of both examples of conceptual innovation, which are grounded in categorical thinking, from the conceptual approach used by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, which conceives of democracy as an aggregate of multiple continuous dimensions. Examples using V-Dem data suggest that it is possible to create measurements of specific concepts that are both qualitatively rich and quantitatively precise. However, the measurement of very general concepts such as democracy comes at the cost of some quantitative information and conceptual clarity.

This chapter discusses the ideological background and origin of the idea of ‘democracy promotion’ and different approaches to its study. It argues that the moral authority claimed for ‘democracy promotion’ features the same totalitarian character as Enlightenment thought and ultimately relies on the absence of context. In order to protect the imagined moral hierarchies upon which the idea of ‘democracy promotion’ so fundamentally depends, ‘democracy promotion’ is thus shown to operate via different processes of depoliticisation, technocratisation and decontextualisation. Followed by a discussion of the conceptual dominance of procedural democracy in both ‘democracy promotion’ research and practice, it discusses select policy-oriented and more critical studies of ‘democracy promotion’. The book’s approach is described as both practice-oriented and combining a focus on material and ideational factors. Finally, it provides a brief overview of select US and European ‘democracy promotion’ organisations active in Jordan, describes the book’s methodology and sources, and outlines the key arguments of the different chapters.