Direct comparison of perception of democracy by people who have lived in both countries would be much clearer evidence of differences in democracy itself.
However, the raw perception of democracy without any other reference to other democracies does not allow for comparison/measurement of democracy itself but rather indicates how happy individuals feel within their current democracy.
The data is a good story and it does encode information, but that information is more significantly influenced by culture, current events, and overall happiness of the populace than it is by “level of democracy”
Sure. When I mean comparison, I mean in trends. If a country scores lower in one year while another scores higher, and this trend repeats, it’s a sign of improving and decaying conditions. Democracy isn’t really something you can measure directly, which makes the entire subject pretty muddy.
that’s why I put quotes around “level of democracy.” If everyone in a country had to vote directly for any and all government action, that is kind of the purest democracy possible, but it would not be a very effective method of government especially for large countries.
In order to rank democracy in a meaningful way, one would need to decide on what the desired outcomes of a “good” democracy are and which outcomes are most important etc. which would make the scale subjective.
Even that would not be democratic, as it ignores the role of ownership of production and distribution. In a capitalist economy, such would still be subject to the same mechanisms preventing bourgeois democracy from following the will of the proletariat.
Direct comparison of perception of democracy by people who have lived in both countries would be much clearer evidence of differences in democracy itself.
However, the raw perception of democracy without any other reference to other democracies does not allow for comparison/measurement of democracy itself but rather indicates how happy individuals feel within their current democracy.
The data is a good story and it does encode information, but that information is more significantly influenced by culture, current events, and overall happiness of the populace than it is by “level of democracy”
Sure. When I mean comparison, I mean in trends. If a country scores lower in one year while another scores higher, and this trend repeats, it’s a sign of improving and decaying conditions. Democracy isn’t really something you can measure directly, which makes the entire subject pretty muddy.
that’s why I put quotes around “level of democracy.” If everyone in a country had to vote directly for any and all government action, that is kind of the purest democracy possible, but it would not be a very effective method of government especially for large countries.
In order to rank democracy in a meaningful way, one would need to decide on what the desired outcomes of a “good” democracy are and which outcomes are most important etc. which would make the scale subjective.
Even that would not be democratic, as it ignores the role of ownership of production and distribution. In a capitalist economy, such would still be subject to the same mechanisms preventing bourgeois democracy from following the will of the proletariat.