(No idea what they’re trying to say tbh. Is that an edited image or… are they calling you out? Seriously unclear)
PODS is an opinion poll. The way you present it implies that it speaks in any way to the actual systems of government of the country in question, when that’s just straight not what it’s about:
[…] At the same time, more respondents said their country was moving in the wrong direction. The report finds that pessimism is especially pronounced in democracies. France, Germany, Lebanon, Puerto Rico and Nigeria were among the countries where responses on national direction were most negative. China recorded the most positive responses, followed by El Salvador, Kuwait, Algeria and Belarus.
What the infographic you’ve posted actually shows is that Chinese citizens are among the most satisfied with their government, which is for sure something, but is decidedly not the same thing as:
China is one of the more comprehensively democratic countries on the list, with some of the fewest glaring weaknesses.
Yes, of course it’s a survey of how people feel about their systems. Most western “democracy indexes” just define democracy loosely around whatever the Nordics are doing, and as such countries with very different democratic systems like China score very low. This shows that that’s not really accurate, the people of China like the system and believe it delivers well for what it does.
Well, yes - this is an opinion poll, it’s not a measure based on real metrics of performance, it’s entirely based on perception.
Which is my whole point: you stating that china is among the more comprehensively democratic countries on the list is a misuse of the infographic. You might hold that opinion, it might be true, but the image you’ve posted is completely disconnected with supporting that claim.
How would you measure how comprehensively democratic a country is, if not by asking people how well it functions in getting across the will of the majority?
I suspect I would start by setting out to write a report that attempts to answer that question, instead of one like this, which makes it very clear that it’s not a document which answers that question.
This pretty clearly answers how people feel about their systems, and considering democracy is will of the majority, it makes sense to begin with how people feel about their country in doing so.
That seems spurious, and I’d like to see some evidence supporting that there’s validity in that position before I entertained the idea that it’s a valid metric with which one could evaluate ‘democracy’.
Perhaps you could even do a study on that subject?
Regardless of you trying to shift the scope here, the study emphatically does not support the conclusion you attempted to use it to draw. You can ruminate on the philosophical cud that is opinion polling all you like, but that was not the object of the study, and it’s fundamentally dishonest to present it like it supports your claims.
Thanks for the link, my point was that posting random pictures without context/methodology/sources is not very helpful.
So the questionnaire asks people how positive/negative they perceive the categories in their own country, I’m not really sure that methodology works very well for oppressive countries.
You can look into their methodology. While it is an imperfect method, it does track pretty well when comparing countries to each other, as well as seeing which countries have more glaring weaknesses than others. It’s already widely reported that over 90% of people support the government in China, so this tracks pretty well.
It’s better in many ways than the standard western way of simply defining democracy by whatever the Nordics are doing, and then ranking everyone else accordingly. China has a very different democratic model than western countries, and so usually fails a lot of checks that are only checking for norms within western style democracies. This ranking helps take into account differences in model towards more socialist democracy by checking how the people feel.
I’m not comparing it to anything, I’m judging it at face value, and it doesn’t pass the smell test. It leads to countries with a one-party system getting scored +5 on pluralism. That ‘does not track’.
China, for example, has 8 parties in addition to the CPC, and has many different administrative divisions. It isn’t the same kind of pluralism as found in western countries, so it’s difficult to compare one to one. Investigating how the question was asked will reveal a lot more about how it is interpreted by the people of China.
This data is public, and was gathered by western organizations. You don’t have to make stuff up.
(No idea what they’re trying to say tbh. Is that an edited image or… are they calling you out? Seriously unclear)
PODS is an opinion poll. The way you present it implies that it speaks in any way to the actual systems of government of the country in question, when that’s just straight not what it’s about:
What the infographic you’ve posted actually shows is that Chinese citizens are among the most satisfied with their government, which is for sure something, but is decidedly not the same thing as:
Yes, of course it’s a survey of how people feel about their systems. Most western “democracy indexes” just define democracy loosely around whatever the Nordics are doing, and as such countries with very different democratic systems like China score very low. This shows that that’s not really accurate, the people of China like the system and believe it delivers well for what it does.
Well, yes - this is an opinion poll, it’s not a measure based on real metrics of performance, it’s entirely based on perception.
Which is my whole point: you stating that china is among the more comprehensively democratic countries on the list is a misuse of the infographic. You might hold that opinion, it might be true, but the image you’ve posted is completely disconnected with supporting that claim.
How would you measure how comprehensively democratic a country is, if not by asking people how well it functions in getting across the will of the majority?
I suspect I would start by setting out to write a report that attempts to answer that question, instead of one like this, which makes it very clear that it’s not a document which answers that question.
This pretty clearly answers how people feel about their systems, and considering democracy is will of the majority, it makes sense to begin with how people feel about their country in doing so.
That seems spurious, and I’d like to see some evidence supporting that there’s validity in that position before I entertained the idea that it’s a valid metric with which one could evaluate ‘democracy’.
Perhaps you could even do a study on that subject?
Regardless of you trying to shift the scope here, the study emphatically does not support the conclusion you attempted to use it to draw. You can ruminate on the philosophical cud that is opinion polling all you like, but that was not the object of the study, and it’s fundamentally dishonest to present it like it supports your claims.
I pretty clearly disagree with how you’re reading this.
Thanks for the link, my point was that posting random pictures without context/methodology/sources is not very helpful.
So the questionnaire asks people how positive/negative they perceive the categories in their own country, I’m not really sure that methodology works very well for oppressive countries.
You can look into their methodology. While it is an imperfect method, it does track pretty well when comparing countries to each other, as well as seeing which countries have more glaring weaknesses than others. It’s already widely reported that over 90% of people support the government in China, so this tracks pretty well.
I did, my opinion is that obviously that’s not a very smart way of conducting the questionnaire.
It’s better in many ways than the standard western way of simply defining democracy by whatever the Nordics are doing, and then ranking everyone else accordingly. China has a very different democratic model than western countries, and so usually fails a lot of checks that are only checking for norms within western style democracies. This ranking helps take into account differences in model towards more socialist democracy by checking how the people feel.
I’m not comparing it to anything, I’m judging it at face value, and it doesn’t pass the smell test. It leads to countries with a one-party system getting scored +5 on pluralism. That ‘does not track’.
China, for example, has 8 parties in addition to the CPC, and has many different administrative divisions. It isn’t the same kind of pluralism as found in western countries, so it’s difficult to compare one to one. Investigating how the question was asked will reveal a lot more about how it is interpreted by the people of China.
Stop trying to sell me China
How or why would I sell a country?