The PACL measure of democracy classifies a country as a democracy if (a) the chief executive is elected, (b) the legislature is elected, (c) more than one party competes, and (d) there has been an alternation in power. The Freedom House measure classifies a country’s level of “freedom” based on many criteria, including whether the government is accountable, the level of corruption, if minorities are autonomous, if people are treated equally under the law, if they have equality of opportunity, and so on. Say you had the following hypothesis: Governments are less corrupt in democracies than in non-democracies. If you want your hypothesis to be falsifiable, which measure of democracy should you use?
