Whether women can vote? Elections? Freedom of the press? And how to measure democracy in a scientific context?

To me, democracy is when the rulers are held responsible for their actions, when the transaction costs of changing the actions of the rulers (policy) are relatively low, and where the common man can engage in meaningful political discourse.

All of this can, in fact, be achieved without voting rights for anyone. In fact, under certain circumstances, voting can be bad for democracy. During the May elections in Malawi, I experienced a whole village sitting still outside the voting registrar for the entire day, protesting that ‘their’ candidate (Tembo) had not given them T-shirts, as he had done to the neighbouring village. They refused to vote until they got T-shirts, and hence they sat outside in the sun the entire election day, waiting in vain.

Malawi had free and fair elections, but the democracy in Malawi suffers from serious flaws, and elections seems to make some of these flaws worse. Especially as long as voters look upon their votes as assets they can sell for a T-shirt.