The data is coming from the world’s largest democracy perception study, published by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation (a Danish-based non-profit organisation).
The data is coming from the world’s largest democracy perception study, published by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation (a Danish-based non-profit organisation).
For the same reason psychology isn’t considered strictly scientific.
Elaborate. A measure of responses is a measure of responses, and these can be quantitatively compared.
There is no “coefficient” of freedom of expression to be coupled with that, so that you can start to try a comparison.
As a random example, that coefficient could be derived by the percentage of population that has been arrested for protesting in the last year.
The numbers are measures of physical reality. You can expand the degrees tested, but that doesn’t mean the numbers were pulled out of thin air or were made up. There’s no such thing as a “coefficient of freedom,” you can certainly fudge numbers however you want to by adding or subtracting variables, but the raw data is very much valid data.
Again, this entire time you seem to be playing the contrarion for the sake of being a contrarion, you complain about Socialists and refuse to engage with Socialist theory. What are you trying to gain?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
As you can see here, measuring democracy in this other way paints a pretty different scenario.
Why? Because the perception of democracy isn’t physical reality.
Yes, I already told you that you can add or subtract variables, but the underlying metrics are valid nonetheless as the metrics themselves. “Do you approve of your government? Yes, or no?” Is a question that you can ask in many different countries, and collect data on. The numbers are not “invalid” because you disagree with the implications.
As for the Economist, it’s measuring freedom for capital to flow, not democracy. The Economist is a bourgeois liberal rag so old and consistent that Lenin described it accurately a century ago as a “journal that speaks for British millionaires.” Some things don’t change.
Again, what are you hoping to gain, here?
Exactly, you can’t trust such a survey, no matter the source.
You can absolutely trust a survey. If I go and ask someone if they want fewer trees, more trees, or the same number, whatever they answer is factually what they answer.
So you can trust the economist’s too. Also “wanting more trees” is something you can measure, it is not a feeling. Asking them if there are enough trees in their city and comparing them with another, unrelated sample taken from a different place instead is throwing numbers around and doesn’t tell you which city has enough trees.