The paper develops the nucleus of a quantitative tool for the comparative assessment of democracies with respect to the electoral inclusion of immigrants (IMIX). The IMIX is then systematically applied to 22 European democracies. The results make clear that the electoral inclusiveness with respect to immigrants is in most countries far away from what it should be according to normative theories of democracy; and this is true independent of whether we look at the laws and regulations of these democracies or whether we evaluate how well they actually function in including immigrants. In both dimensions, we find significant differences among the European countries, though. We conclude by indicating how our evaluative concept could potentially be expanded or modified.

Publication details and link to source: Joachim Blatter, Samuel Schmid, and Andrea Blättler, ‘The Immigrant Inclusion Index (IMIX): A Tool for Assessing the Electoral Inclusiveness of Democracies with Respect to Immigrants‘, University of Lucerne Working Paper, 2014.