(Dec 10: corrected some typos and errors of omission).
See part 1 here.
This here is a case study application of the ideas in Daniel J. Levitin's A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age.
To recap, the World Values Survey had this question:
The original Financial Times graphic shown below misrepresents the information in the survey in two ways:
1. Incompleteness: From FT, you might get the impression that support for a strong undemocratic leader necessarily goes with decreasing support for democracy. But FT shows only the response to the first part of the four-part question, in which the respondent is not asked to choose or rank the four different systems of government, but rather to rate each one independently.
I show the responses to two parts of the question, and we shall see that it is very common for both the support for a strong undemocratic leader to rise even along with support for a democratic political system.
2. Visual distortion: The lower and upper limits on the y axis help make the trends look strong.
The original Financial Times graphic:
What the actual data for India looks like - one form of completeness: for India there are four surveys available, from specific years, 1995, 2001, 2006 and 2012 (not 2014), and we show the results for democracy and strong leaders here. I've labelled the chart "Strong leader *vs* Democracy" but the data in the chart indicates trends for a strong leader *and* democracy.
What the data for the two questions for the countries in the FT chart look like (another form of completeness); but as you look at the charts, note that:
The data tables:
See part 1 here.
This here is a case study application of the ideas in Daniel J. Levitin's A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age.
To recap, the World Values Survey had this question:
I'm going to describe various types of political systems and ask what you think about each as a way of governing this country. For each one, would you say it is a very good, fairly good, fairly bad or very bad way of governing this country?
Having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections.
Having experts, not government, make decisions according to what they think is best for the country.
Having the army rule
Having a democratic political system
The original Financial Times graphic shown below misrepresents the information in the survey in two ways:
1. Incompleteness: From FT, you might get the impression that support for a strong undemocratic leader necessarily goes with decreasing support for democracy. But FT shows only the response to the first part of the four-part question, in which the respondent is not asked to choose or rank the four different systems of government, but rather to rate each one independently.
I show the responses to two parts of the question, and we shall see that it is very common for both the support for a strong undemocratic leader to rise even along with support for a democratic political system.
2. Visual distortion: The lower and upper limits on the y axis help make the trends look strong.
The original Financial Times graphic:
What the actual data for India looks like - one form of completeness: for India there are four surveys available, from specific years, 1995, 2001, 2006 and 2012 (not 2014), and we show the results for democracy and strong leaders here. I've labelled the chart "Strong leader *vs* Democracy" but the data in the chart indicates trends for a strong leader *and* democracy.
What the data for the two questions for the countries in the FT chart look like (another form of completeness); but as you look at the charts, note that:
- All the countries in the chart show an increase in those who think it is good to have a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections.
- All the countries in the chart except the US and China show an increase in those who think a democratic political system is good.
- In every country the support for a democratic political system is higher than the support for a strong undemocratic leader, though Russia is close.
- In every country but Russia, the support for a democratic political system is at least 20% higher than support for a strong undemocratic leader.
- The most dramatic rise in support for a democratic political system in this set of countries is in Russia (25%). Note that in countries that started with a high support for democracy, such an increase is not possible, it would exceed the bound of 100%.
- Russia and China show the largest rise in support for a strong leader (25+%)
- Only in Russia, India and Turkey the support for a strong undemocratic leader is at a majority or close to it (though for India, see part 1 for how the strong-leader question has been rendered in Hindi that might explain some of it).
The data tables:
| Strong leader | |||||||
| Year | Russia | India | Turkey | Spain | US | China | Germany |
| Y-1990s | 42.6 | 44.2 | 35.8 | 25.3 | 23.7 | 13.2 | 13.4 |
| Y-2014 | 67 | 56.4 | 49.8 | 39.5 | 34.1 | 30.7 | 20.7 |
| Democracy | |||||||
| Year | Russia | India | Turkey | Spain | US | China | Germany |
| Y-1990s | 44.9 | 71 | 81 | 89.1 | 85.1 | 73.3 | 93.6 |
| Y-2014 | 67.3 | 79.7 | 83.2 | 91.2 | 79.7 | 70.5 | 94.1 |
