Or, that new decisions during the interelection period are governed by the preceding seven conditions, operating, however, under rather different institutional circumstances. If elections, like the market, were continuous, then we should have no need of the eighth condition. But elections are only periodic. Because human organizations rarely and perhaps never reach the limit set by these conditions. If the degree to which a political system meets one of the conditions could be measured, then a scheme could be developed for classifying political systems.
Dahl proposes such a measurement scheme which is rather complex.
In his measurement scheme, each of the eight limiting conditions is measured on a scale of 0 to 1 where 1 represents the full compliance with the condition, and 0 means noncompliance. All 8 conditions are scaled at 0.75 or higher. All 8 conditions are scaled at 0.5 or higher. At least one of the 8 conditions is scaled at .5 or higher and at least one of the 8 conditions is scaled below 0.5. Oligarchies Some of the 8 conditions are scaled at 0.25 or higher but none is scaled higher than 0.5.