EPB WEEK #9- How Solid is Mass Support for Democracy—And How Can We Measure It?

Let’s begin with three interesting bits from the article:

v  At the time the article was written (2001), more people in the US (30%) supported having a “strong leader who didn’t have to bother with elections or parliament” than Egypt, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Morocco and Bangladesh (All around 20%).

v  Having tolerance for “homosexual” people (According to the article, the most disliked group in most societies at the time) is a much better measure of how stable a democracy is than people saying they favour democracy. This was explained as being because having tolerance of other people and ideas that are different from yours is necessary for stability in a democracy as parties change.

v   In 1997 all of the following countries received the same score on freedom house’s democratic index; Slovenia, Hungary, Poland, Latvia, South Africa, Uruguay, Britain, France, Germany, and Belgium

Reading summary

This article is about comparing what people think about democracy as a term in comparison to what people think about features of democracy in different countries. The general idea is that a lot of people say that a democratic government is a good thing, but when quizzed on commonly accepted democratic norms significantly fewer people approve. This article looks at the traditional measures for measuring public opinion on democracy as well as less conventional measures such as interpersonal trust, tolerance of “outgroups”, political participation, and emphasis on civil rights. The article uses three main groups of countries who were not established democracies to look at how the feared on the different measures; post-Soviet states, Islamic states and Asian states.

This first table looks at public opinion on having a democratic system. The public in Islamic countries (indicated in bold) largely favor democracy. Post-Soviet states eg Russia and Ukraine do not. The article suggests the lack of support from these states is in part because of the economic system at the time of democratization. Also, it remarks on how democratization was accompanied by Ethnic conflict, rising crime rates and widespread corruption in many countries.

In the second table we see a fairly quick U-Turn of some Islamic states.

This table measures support for a strong leader who does not follow the democratic norms of holding elections and having a parliament. Some Islamic countries, in particular Albania, the support for democracy and there support for a strong leader who does not follow democratic norms leads to the conclusion that they do not understand what a democracy is, thus have little chance at successfully having a long term democratic regime.

The next table looks at the public opinion on a variety of different measures of democracy and compares them with the actual levels of democracy in those countries. It measures the level of democracy in a single year, 1995 (short term) as well as over a period, 1981-2000 (long term). The figures represent the correlation of the percentage of the public which supported each item with the actual levels of democracy,

From this we can see that opinions on democracy is a weak predictor of actual levels of democracy with a correlation of 0.072 (short term) and 0.224 (long term).  However, there is a significantly greater correlation between the survival/ self-expression factor scores. This measures public opinion on the things which are necessary for a stable democracy; culture of tolerance, trust, political activism, well-being, and the extent to which its people value freedom of speech and self-expression. This is further displayed on the following table which compare long term levels of democracy with public opinion on the survival/ self-expression factor.

The correlation between these factors is 0.830- which is very strong. The article then mentions countries that were outliers, China and Vietnam. Which despite there low democratic levels were experiencing disproportionally high levels public opinion of Survival/self-expression values as a consequence of economic advancement. Going back to the Islamic countries, in the first 2 tables it the public opinion on democracy was strong, but this graph tells a different story in regards to democratic norms. None of the Islamic countries have high support for the Survival/self-expression values, leading to the idea that they would not be able to create stable democracies.

Finally, This article has an interesting discussion on how to create a stable democratic society. It suggests that first economic development must occur, then higher levels of self-expression values, and stable democracy shall follow. It discusses the idea that democracy may cause higher levels of self-expression values, though it points out that the experience of post-Soviet states not supporting this hypothesis. It also debunks the idea that skilful elites can create a democratic state in practically any setting by pointing out that all “rich” countries have democratic institutions while India is the only “poor” country with long term democratic institutions.

What is the writer trying to accomplish? are its claims controversial?

The intention of the piece is to better understand what mindsets of the public constitute higher likelihoods of successful long-term democratic institutions. Some of the claims are controversial- particularly its proposal that first there must be economic development, then higher levels of self-expression values and finally higher levels of democracy. It indicates other works that disagree with these findings then gives evidence which supports why it disagrees with these.

What methods are used to establish the truth of the main claims?

The methods used are statistical analysis of public opinions along side freedom house rankings of various countries

Are there any weaknesses in the argument? Are the methods used to arrive at the conclusions appropriate?

I think the argument is strong. 19 years on from when this article came out, a brief look at freedom house at some of the countries mentioned in the article as having a relatively low chance of stable democracy currently have low scores on freedom house (Russia, Albania and Ukraine were checked) and countries which were meantioned as having a high chance of becoming more democratic have also done so (Japan, South Korea and Poland checked)

Links to course

This article ties in with discussions in “Lecture 14: Benevolent Authoritarianism and Economic Development” pertaining to the "can a democracy work in an economically underdeveloped state?" discussion.

Inglehart, R. (2003). How Solid is Mass Support for Democracy—And How Can We Measure It? PS: Political Science & Politics, 36(1), 51-57. doi:10.1017/S1049096503001689

Checking of levels of democracy done on https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores