SIR

The two cross-national indices with gender-differentiated data introduced by the UNDP in 1995, as well as several other such indices developed subsequently, are an important resource for researchers and policy makers interested in gender disparities. Yet questions remain regarding how these indices should be interpreted and how valid they are. Relying on a framework that synthesizes key guidelines concerning the methodology of measurement, this article offers an assessment of indices currently used to study gender disparities on a global scale and sheds light on these unresolved questions. We answer two questions-what do these indices with gender-differentiated data actually measure? and, how valid are these indices?and discuss the implications of our assessment for users and producers of gender indices.

The increasingly global scope of democratization has challenged comparativists to engage in crossregional research as part of a collective enterprise. The response to such a challenge, however, hinges upon their ability to both base their research on a set of clear concepts, a prerequisite for theory-building, and clarify their method of case selection, a prerequisite for theory-testing. While these conceptual issues have yet to be fully resolved, I show how the work of a group of 'regime analysts' provides the best starting point for scholars interested in this enterprise. For this purpose, I show how the disaggregation of the concept of political regime provides the basis for a distinction among three analytically separable problems, the process of transition, the outcome of this process of transition, and the process of consolidation, and for more nuanced distinctions in terms of modes of transition, regime types and subtypes, and degrees of consolidation. I also show how the problem of conceptual stretching is avoided by regime analysts in the course of case selection through the vertical organization of their concepts along a ladder of generality and the application of a simple rule. Finally, I show how the study of political regimes on the basis of quantitative indices of democracy fails to avoid the problems of conceptual conflation and conceptual stretching.

Su libro más reciente es Measuring Democracy: A Bridge Between Scholarship and Politics (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). Fue parte del equipo que redactó el informe del Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD), La democracia en América Latina. Hacia una democracia de ciudadanas y ciudadanos (2004), y un segundo informe regional, Nuestra democracia (2010), preparado por el PNUD y la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA).

was also used quite widely. The same cannot be said about comparative politics. Indeed, RCT and, more specifically, game theory-a term I use to refer to the branch of RCT that studies interdependent decision making with a formal methodologywas hardly a standard point of reference for comparativists until quite recently. 2 Since the early 1990s, however, much has changed in comparative politics. A number of prominent comparativists published widely read

Este trabajo considera el monitoreo de la democracia y aborda cuatro preguntas: ¿Por qué debe monitorearse la democracia? ¿Quiénes son los monitores? ¿Qué debe monitorearse? Y, ¿cómo debe llevarse a cabo el monitoreo? Primero articula el consenso emergente referido al monitoreo de la democracia. Luego la discusión se vuelca a varios nuevos desafíos que necesitan ser resueltos. Específicamente, el artículo se focaliza en los desafíos de reconocer y balancear múltiples valores políticos, reunir a políticos con investigadores, integrar esfuerzos de monitoreo y solucionar problemas de medición. Se pone énfasis en la importancia de plantear estas temáticas complejas y de profundizar el consenso surgido en referencia al monitoreo de la democracia.

573 revista de ciencia pOLítica / vOLumen 30 / nº 3 / 2010 / 573 -597 * agradezco a mariano Bertucci, sebastián mazzuca, richard snyder y dos revisores anónimos por sus muy útiles sugerencias. La traducción al castellano fue hecha por claudia Luera.

AgendAs y estrAtegiAs de investigAción en el estudio de lA PolíticA lAtinoAmericAnA revistA de cienciA PolíticA / volumen 27 / nº 1 / 2007 / -21 Artículos CienCia PolítiCa AgendAs y estrAtegiAs de investigAción en el estudio de lA políticA lAtinoAmericAnA Gerardo L. Munck universidad deL sur de caLifornia

This article contributes to ongoing debates about the direction of comparative politics through an analysis of new data on the scope, objectives, and methods of research in the field. The results of the analysis are as follows. Comparative politics is a rich and diverse field that cannot be accurately characterized on the basis of just one dimension or even summarized in simple terms. In turn, the tendency to frame choices about the direction of the field in terms of a stark alternative between an old area studies approach and a new economic approach relies on largely unsupported assumptions. It is therefore advisable to focus on problematic methodological practices that, as this study shows, are widespread in comparative research and thus pose serious impediments to the production of knowledge.

and thus were guilty of a "large-nation bias." 2 Second, they were anchored for the most part in the experience of countries from Western Europe that had democratized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and because of the focus on large countries, they put overwhelming emphasis on the cases of England and France. The standard approach to comparison was to cast cases beyond Western Europe, with the obvious exception of Germany, as contrast or negative cases and to analyze them in terms of their divergence from the path blazed by the classic cases of England and France. 3 Subsequent scholarship on democratization has gone beyond this earlier literature in a number of ways. A second body of literature, published largely since the late 1980s, continues to focus on Europe while making some important departures. This literature broadens the intra-European scope, by adding lesser-known smaller cases to the set of analyzed cases. 4 Relatedly, it moves beyond the stark counterposition between England and France as positive cases and non-European cases as negative cases. Greater attention is paid to the positive experiences of European cases other than England and France. Moreover, a range of negative experiences from the heartland of Europe during the interwar period are scrutinized. 5 This new strategy of comparison has generated important insights and findings that have enriched our knowledge about democracy. 6