Why does the empirical evidence provide reasons to doubt citizen’s capacities to make informed judgments?

Even more importantly, some specific observations also raise puzzling red flags, generating broader doubts about the reliability of the survey results. In certain cases, public evaluations of democratic performance diverge considerably from both the contemporary and the historical indicators of democratic governance provided by Freedom House and Polity IV. Even the most rigorous and well-designed social surveys can only provide an approximate guide to public opinion. Measurement error can always account for some apparent anomalies in the results. Moreover surveys in autocratic societies may be unable to gauge public opinion on sensitive political issues, for fear of repression. Nevertheless it is striking that in Figure 6.1, the public in China expressed strong approval of the democratic performance of their own government, a pattern also recorded in other surveys.[i]About the same proportion expressed approval in India. Yet the latter is the world’s largest democracy, with six decades of competitive multiparty elections ever since independence in 1947.[ii] By contrast, since 1949 the People’s Republic of China has been ruled by the Communist Party (CPC). Despite some liberalization of the press, and the use of competitive village and town elections, human rights abuses are common. Opposition reform movements, political dissidents, and some national minorities face serious restrictions and repression. The Communist party governs without challenge from nation-wide popular elections or the checks provided by an independent judiciary.

[Figure 6.1 about here]

Yet similar puzzling patterns can also be observed in China and a few other cases concerning public evaluations of the state of human rights. According to the WVS survey, many in China, Vietnam and Jordan gave positive evaluations forhow their governmenthandled human rights (see Figure 6.1). This is despite the fact that these states have a record of abusing civil liberties and restricting fundamental freedoms, for instance Human Rights Watch reports that China has frequently silenced opponents and critics of the Communist party leadership, prevented protest demonstrations, and banned opposition parties.[iii] Vietnam saw a brief period of greater openness in late-2006, around the time when the 5th wave WVS survey was conducted in the country, in the run up to the country’s entry to the World Trade Organization. This may have influenced public perceptions that human rights were strengthening in the country. Nevertheless the report published by the U.S. State Department in 2009 notes that political opposition movements remain prohibited and the government continues to crack down on dissent, arresting political activists and reporters, causing several democratic reformers to flee the country.[iv] Individuals have been arbitrarily detained for political activities and denied the right to fair and expeditious trials. The Vietnamese government has tightened controls over the press and freedom of speech, assembly, movement, and association.

Public opinion in Jordan is also puzzling; for example, figure 6.1 shows that the public’s evaluations of the performance of democracy in their own country appears to be more positive in Jordan than in Canada, the United States, or the Netherlands. Jordan isregarded as a relatively liberal political system in the region, with the country holding regular multiparty parliamentary elections, but the lower house of the Jordanian National Assembly has few independent powers, parties are weak, and freedom of expression is restricted. By contrast executive power is concentrated in the hands of the head of state,King Abdullah II, who appoints the prime minister and cabinet, and who may dissolve the National Assembly and dismiss the cabinet at his discretion.[v]Despite this, many Jordanian citizens approved of their government’s democratic record, while also expressing widespread agreement with the importance of living in a democracy (see Figure 5.7). Clearly these cases could be attributed to measurement error or other technical aberrations, especially in countries where market research companies and standards of survey methods remain under-developed. It may also be impossible to conduct social surveys asking for evaluations about the government in repressive states which lack freedom of expression.

What evidence could throw light on these puzzling discrepancies between mass opinion and expert perceptual evaluations? Here we can use the concept of cosmopolitan societies, developed in detail elsewhere, defined as those whichhave the lowest external and internal barriers in access to information.[vi]The Cosmopolitanism index developed for the earlier study allows us to test the impact of cosmopolitan communication flows on knowledge about democracy. The index is constructed by combining indicators of Media Freedom (from Freedom House), Economic Development (GDP per capita in purchasing power parity) and the KOF Globalization Index (including economic, political and cultural components). These indices were first standardized around the mean, with a standard deviation of 1, to give each component equal weighting, and then combined into a single Cosmopolitanism index.

Figure 6.1: Public evaluations of democracy and human rights

Notes:

Democratic performance: V163. “And how democratically is this country being governed today? Again using a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 means that it is “not at all democratic” and 10 means that it is “completely democratic,” what position would you choose?”

Human rights: V164.“How much respect is there for individual human rights nowadays in this country? Do you feel there is (4) A great deal of respect for individual human rights (3) Fairly much respect (2) Not much respect (1) No respect at all.”

For comparison, these items have been standardized to 100-points. For the survey items contained in each indicator, see Table 3.2 and Technical Appendix A.

Source: World Values Survey 2005

[i]Tianjian Shi. ‘China: Democratic values supporting an authoritarian system.’ In Yun-han Chu, Larry Diamond, Andrew J. Nathan, and Doh Chull Shin. Eds. 2008. How East Asians View Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press.

[ii] The exception to this record of continuous democracy in India was a 21-month period of rule by decree in a state of emergence declared during the mid-1970s by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

[iii] For details, see Human Rights Watch. 2009. World report.

[iv] U.S. State Department. 2009. 2008 Human Rights Reports: Vietnam.

[v]Sean L. Yom. 2009. ‘Jordan: Ten More Years of Autocracy.’ Journal of Democracy 20(4).

[vi] For more details, see Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. 2009. Cosmopolitan Communications. New York: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 5.