Statistical Ambivalence
By Sean at 10 November, 2007, 9:39 pm
“Democracy” enjoys the support of only 36 percent of Russians according to the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development’s report “Life in Transition: A Survey of People’s Experiences and Attitudes.” Moreover, 40 percent of Russians prefer a planned economy over a market one. These statistics made Kommersant declare that “1/3 of Russians Prefer Authoritarian Rule” and Vedomosti write of a “Planned Satisfaction.”
But why the glass half full assessment? Clearly there is another 64 percent and 60 percent of respondents think otherwise. A clear majority. Yet given these two articles, one would assume that Russian’s are ready to return to the halcyon days of Brezhnev, or one might even dare say, Stalin. But this is not the case.
I think it is important to note that in regard to the 36 percent of Russians favoring “authoritarianism” (whatever that means) is a bit misleading. Respondents were given the following answers for questions about democracy: 1) “For people like me, it does not matter;” 2) “Under some circumstances, an authoritarian government may be preferable to a democratic one;” 3) “Democracy is preferable to any other form of political system.” About 20 percent of responds from the CIS plus Mongolia chose the second answer. But what does “under some circumstances” and “may be preferable” mean? What kind of circumstances? On this the report does say.
While about 55 percent of respondents chose “Democracy is preferable to any other form of political system”, it is interesting almost 30 percent don’t care either way. This means that either they don’t feel the effects of “authoritarianism” or “democracy” on their daily lives, or don’t really see the difference between the two. I think this ambivalence deserves far more investigation.
Respondents’ attitudes toward the market are similar. Again, the survey provided similar answers: 1) “For people like me, it does not matter;” 2) “Under some circumstances, a planned economy may be preferable to a market economy;” 3) “A market economy is preferable to any other form of economic system.” Again, “under some circumstances” isn’t defined. A bit over 40 percent of respondents from the CIS plus Mongolia said that the market economy is preferable. Almost 30 percent chose “under some circumstances” a planned economy may be better. And like with democracy, a good 30 percent didn’t care either way. Again, if Kommersant and Vedomosti would have had headlines like “1/3 of Russians are ambivalent toward democracy, authoritarianism, planned economy, and market economy” a whole different light would have been cast on “Life in Transition.” Namely, that despite what ideologues think at least a third of the population, if not more, will go along and cope with whatever system they’re given.
These statistics break down in interesting ways when you combine authoritarianism and democracy with planned economy and market economy. 19 percent of Russians favored “democracy and market economy”, 12 percent “democracy and planned economy”; 5 percent “authoritarianism and market economy” and 23 percent “authoritarianism and planned economy.” One might immediately point out that the last choice scored higher than the other three. However, it becomes less significant when you see that 21 percent of respondents said that “neither matters” and 20 percent favored “all other combinations”. As to what those “other combinations” are the report doesn’t say. But the point I want to emphasize is that as many people are ambivalent about their political economic system as those who care.
The survey gives other charts that chop these results up further according to age, gender, and income. It is no surprise that the young and wealthy have more positive attitudes toward “democracy” and the “market” than the old and the poor. After all, the lives of the young and the wealthy have had an easier time in the “transition.” Such tends to be the case anywhere.
The survey also records attitudes toward corruption, “trust in society,” and “trust in public institutions.” The vast majority of Russians despite age and income level feel that corruption is about the same as it was before 1989. Trust in society, however, has fallen sharply. Before the collapse of communism, trust in people hovered between 70 and 60 percent. Now its fallen to between 30 and 40 percent. One can include a bit of nostalgia to explain the pre-1989 numbers. But it is important that regardless of age and income most people perceive that people can’t be trusted.
Statistics about how people feel about public institutions are also interesting. Over 50 percent of respondents said that they had “complete plus some trust” in the Presidency, surely a boost for the effort to make Putin a “National Leader.” About 10 percent were ambivalent toward the president and about 30 percent didn’t trust him at all. The public trust hierarchy went as follows: the military (40 percent), the Government (30 percent), the Banks and Financial System (30 percent), the Courts (28 percent), the Parliament (22 percent), the Police (20 percent), and finally Political Parties (13 percent). “Neither trust nor distrust” in all these hovered around 20 percent.
I think the discrepancy in trust in the Presidency and in Political Parties says a lot of what Russians think about politics. Especially in regard to the upcoming Duma elections. But I also think the gap suggests something else: When Russians say that they favor democracy what do they mean exactly? Here, as always, were are left to our own speculation.
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Russians have so many confusing ideas about democracy, that I’m not even sure those who said they prefer democracy really know what that means. Ditto “market economy.”
Okay, a question to all you experts. If you believe that democracy is indeed the way to go in this imperfect world, what country in the world is the best example of a democracy? Definitely not the US, but which country would you choose as an example? Of course, I’m not asking about the perfectly run democracy, since there is no such place. As Churchill famously said, “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried.” But then he also said, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
And to inspire all you political experts, here is another Churchill quote: “Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.”
(BTW, I’m no Churchill expert, I wanted to get my first Churchill quote right and found a site full of his quotes.)
Well that’s easy Kolya. There is no country in my view that represents the best example of democracy. And those long time readers of this blog have probably surmised I have a deep skepticism toward “really existing democracy”. I think that it is reaching its historical limits and is under great stress and even crisis. Simply, I think it “democracy” (in whatever form) has become the ideological tool of the ruling class rather than a power exercised from below. At least here in the US, and certainly Russia.
Sean, I’m aware that the word “democracy” has lost much of its luster. Personally, I never thought that the US is a great example of democracy. That’s why I worded my question the way I did. There can be a huge gap between “best” and “perfect”.
So Sean, forget about the word “democracy”, but if you were put behind something like Rawls’s “veil of ignorace”, which two or three countries of the present world would you choose?
Since I asked the question, I should go first. Although I have spent only a minimal time in a couple of them, from what I know about them, I would choose one of the Scandinavian countries. By saying that I’m not implying that they are perfect, have few problems, or anything of the sort.
That is a difficult question. Which three? The Scandinavian countries are always held up as the best. Frankly, I don’t know enough about their system to say and picking one of them as the best example feels a little cliche. But just to give an answer for the sake of discussion, I guess in regard to benefits vs. costs, they probably rank pretty high on the good example list.
For me the question isn’t which democracy is the best or even a model to follow. Democracy is always particular to a nation’s history, culture etc. For me the main problem is how democracy is more and more only associated with elections and not with political participation on a wider scale. This is what I think is interesting about Khodorkovsky’s letter. In my view most democracy’s consider their populations the “herd” which is called upon every so often to legitimize the ruling class’s power through “voting.”
On a global scale, I would say that there are two types of democracies at work. Democracy is a threat to places that have authoritarian regimes because there it means more than voting. It means exercising political power in a real mass way. Look at recent events in Burma for example. Ironically, democracy in democratic states has very little of this. Democracy is more there to legitimize power rather than to challenge it. Many people praise the stability of many democratic regimes and take that stability to be signs of popular content. To some extent that is true. But there is something about the ossifying effect of this stability that makes the system fragile and hollow.
The Scandinavian countries are always held up as the best. Frankly, I don’t know enough about their system to say and picking one of them as the best example feels a little cliche.
It does indeed. My father was involved for about 10 years with a lawsuit surrounding the collapse of a huge Swedish insurance company. He quickly learned that democracy as practiced in Sweden is not what people think it is. It seems to work, though.