The theory and practice of democracy have moved on from the paradigm of electoral democracy to conceptualising alternative models that can facilitate democratic deepening in different contexts. Methodology should follow too. In this piece, I build on Morlino’s framework, which takes a step towards a pluralised assessment of democratic qualities but remains largely hinged on the electoral model of democracy. I suggest that Morlino’s heuristic tools can be further sharpened by incorporating a deliberative democratic criterion. I provide an empirical illustration through the Philippine case – a country that already exhibits formal features of electoral democracy but fails to translate democratic impulses into democratic deepening.