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Working Paper Korrekturen 1 Working Paper prepared for AUSTRIAN RESEARCH ASSOCIATION, WORKING GROUP ON DEMOCRACY: “Civil Society and Democracy” Research Conference, November 9-10, 2012 Measuring How People View Democracy. Conceptual Problems and Possible Alternatives.1 Norma Osterberg-Kaufmann Abstract A number of standardized surveys make comparable data available on attitudes of people towards the principles and institutions of democracy and identify a world-wide overwhelming support for democracy. But faced with numerous unexpected findings, the credibility of this predominant support for democracy is questionable. The paper will discuss methodological challenges of survey-research, which are rooted particularly in the phenomena of linguistic and cultural equivalence. Facing the limitations of pure qualitative or quantitative methods, the author will argument for the need for alternatives for surveying attitudes and will introduce Repertory Grid as a mixed- method study. This method has been developed particularly to measure personal constructs of how people view their environment, personal mindsets and opinions. The specific advantage of this method is that the initial data is qualitative, using the language, the words and the associations of the respondents, while the analysis uses statistical methods, which allows a comparison and generalisation of the concepts and meanings. 1. Research Problem Measuring people’s attitudes toward democracy is a key question of current research on democracy as they are crucial for a stable political system and/ or the chances for democratization. The continuous importance of a deeper understanding of democratization can be illustrated by a number of examples such as the transformation to democracy in the post-socialist Europe, the EU- integration of those countries, democratic or authoritarian stagnation (Merkel 2010), failed external democratization efforts (Grimm 2010) and last but not least the unknown future of the countries of the Arab Spring. Facing the difficulties illustrated by these examples, one fundamental question has to be, whether we are right with the assumption of a universal and homogenous understanding of what democracy means. Or do different cultural and socio- economic preconditions lead to differences in the understanding in different countries and therefore as well to different expectations what democracy and their institutions should achieve. This knowledge would have fundamental consequences for future democracy promotion policy like the EU-integration of the remaining candidate countries. A broader understanding of these issues 1 Please do not cite, circulate, or copy without authors’ permission. 2 would facilitate the understanding of the evolution of democracy even in well- established democracies, as even there the nature of participation (protests, networks, direct and liquid democracy, etc.) and legitimacy has changed dramatically in the past decades. Therefore it is important to all theorist and practitioners to figure out whether the understanding of and expectations on democracy changed as well and if so, into which direction. A number of standardized surveys make comparable data available on peoples’ attitudes towards the principles and institutions of democracy (Diamond 2008; Welzel/Inglehart 2008). Faced with numerous unexpected findings, such as a more favourable opinion on democracy in Albania and Azerbaijan than in Switzerland or Sweden (Welzel/Inglehart 2008), the credibility of the worldwide overwhelming support for democracy is questionable (Inglehart 2003; Pickel 2006; Dalton/Shin/Jou 2007). Even studies, combining the support for democracy with additional alternative variables such as support for strong leaders or army in governmental accountability, generated contradictory results. These inconsistencies led to the exclusion from various analyzes of certain autocratic ruled countries (Pickel 2006). Considering the number of outliers in various researches, the statement of overwhelming positive attitude towards democracy looses its significance, as it remains valid only for Western Europe and North America. Before analyzing the support of democracy we must clarify whether the meaning of democracy is homogenous (Dalton et al. 2008). Neither by qualitative (Dalton et al. 2008) nor by quantitative research (Inglehart/Welzel 2005; Mattes/Bratton 2007; Welzel/Inglehart 2008) political science has appropriate explanations for the above-mentioned “unexpected findings” (Welzel/Inglehart 2008) and for the contradictions between empirical observations and theoretical research on democracy. The described problems highlight the methodological challenges for survey- researches, in particular the phenomenon of linguistic and functional equivalence. It becomes an obstacle especially for cross-culture and cross- country studies, as there is probably neither a comparable understanding of the questions or an equal meaning of the used terms or their associations (Lauth/Pickel/Pickel 2009). In addition, because of subjective bias by social 3 desirability and paying lip service, it is doubtful if expressed opinions about social issues are reliable (Pickel 2006). The working paper will review in a state of the art chapter the different approaches on measuring how people view democracy, regarding both quantitative and qualitative methods. By weighting up the respective strengths and weaknesses of both approaches the working paper will suggest a mixed method design to answer the question on people’s attitudes in a more sophisticated manner. The Repertory Grid Interview will be introduced as an appropriate alternative to pure quantitative or pure qualitative methods. 2. State of the Art 2.1 Quantitative: Survey Research The end of the thesis of worldwide overwhelming support of democracy Since Almond and Verba (1963) analyzed the attitudes of citizen in five countries in the 1960s, there is today, thanks to survey research, data available for about 90% of the world’s population. Numerous cross-country and cross-culture surveys2 measure people´s attitudes towards the principles and institutions of democracy. The analyzes thereby make a differentiation between the principal support for democracy as the best form of government3 and the specific support of the democratic political system4 (Pickel 2006). Following the data of survey research, the worldwide support of democracy is overwhelming (Inglehart 2003, Pickel 2006). The support of democracy continuously is around 90% in the majority of countries covered by the World Value Survey over longer survey periods. Following the assumption, that societies expressing themselves supportive to democracy are a democracy (Inglehart 2003), those results are surprising. When looking at the examples mentioned at the beginning that there are higher democracy support rates in Albania than in Sweden for example (Welzel/Inglehart 2008), the 2 World Value Survey, Latinobarometro, Afrobarometer, European values Survey, Eurobarometer, New Democracy Barometer and Central and Eastern Europe Barometer 3 Principal support is measured by the interviewees opinion if a specific kind of government is very good, good, bad or very bad, by the agreement to the statement one should have a democratic political system ort he agreement to the statement that democracy may have its problems but is better than any other kind of government. 4 The specific support of democracy concerns the particular situation of a country, government or current situation. 4 meaningfulness of this support is questionable. Also the high support rates in China should be interpreted with caution, because how people view democracy may differ from the common understanding used in political culture research (Pickel 2006). Political culture research follows the Polyarchy definition of Robert Dahl (1989) who emphasized mainly the representative elements of democracy. The definition focuses on the representatives, which are elected in free and fair elections and are accountable for all decisions made in a democracy. When adding variables such as the support for anti-democratic alternative, the contradictions are even stronger. A divergent understanding of democracy in contrast to the definition used in political culture research and the heterogeneous understanding from one country to the other become obvious when analyzing the survey results. There are countries equally supporting democracy and anti-democratic alternatives. In pre-Arabian Spring Egypt for example, the involvement of military in government was not seen as contradictory to democracy. In Georgia, people do not see a contradiction between the compliance with democratic principles and having a strong leader in government (WVS 2005/2008). How people view democracy in those countries vary obviously from Dahl´s (1989) definition (see Table 1). Another surprise arises when analyzing people’s opinion about the democratic performance of their governments in contrast to the quality of democracy measured with indexes like Freedom House. Linked to the question on the satisfaction with democracy in the own country and the evaluation of the current political system, reflecting an abstract support for democratic ideals, is in how far this support also translates into political culture. Interestingly, the data on the question to what extent the own country is perceived as democratic gives a ranking of top 20 of “felt democracy”, composed of countries like Norway, Swiss or Sweden but as well Vietnam or Jordan. The latters has been categorized by Freedom
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