H7 Electoral system
3.2 The datasets employed in this study
This section describes the datasets employed in the following chapters of this dissertation: the World Values Surveys, the Voice and Accountability Index, and the Human Development Index. Addi-‐ tionally, it will evaluate an original survey administered to Romanian students from a large state univer-‐ sity (“Babeş-‐Bolyai” University in Cluj, Romania), during the Spring and Fall semesters in 2009. These brief analyses will present not only the most significant technical details regarding those datasets, but they will also provide some background information regarding their origin. For a succinct view, Table 3.1. summarizes the datasets employed in this study.
Table 3.1. Datasets used in this research
Data set Year Number of
Countries Level of analysis
World Values Survey 1989-‐1993
(wave 2) 4 Micro (individual)
World Values Survey 1994-‐1999
(wave 3) 36 Micro (individual) & ag-‐gregate (country) World Values Survey 1999-‐2004
(wave 4)
4 Micro (individual) Voice and Accountabil-‐
ity
1999 36 Macro (country)
Human Development Index
1998 36 Macro (country)
CSES 2001-‐2006 40 Micro (individual) & ag-‐
gregate (country)
Gallagher’s Index 2000-‐2004 40 Macro (country)
Benoit and Laver 2000-‐2004 34 Macro (country)
Original survey 2009 1 Micro (individual)
In his account of the emergence of World Values Surveys, Inglehart (1997, 343) describes them as an outgrowth of the European Values Surveys project. The widespread interest evoked by the latter study resulted in its replication in other, non-‐European countries. The first wave of the World Values Survey was implemented between in just 22 countries between1981-‐1984 (Inglehart 1997, 343). By the
time of the most recent wave (the fifth, 2005-‐2008), the number of countries surveyed increased almost three-‐fold, reaching 57 cases from all continents (World Values Survey 2010).
The traditional approach to measuring political tolerance is to use questions about the respond-‐ ents’ attitudes toward the least-‐liked group. These questions were present in only one wave of the World Values Survey, the third (1996-‐1999). If the goal is to analyze the evolution of tolerance, then having just one survey is problematic. Moreover, more recent studies have criticized the least-‐liked group approach. Thus, in order to address these shortcomings, this study is using both the data from the third survey (least-‐liked group approach), as well as questions from other waves (alternative opera-‐ tionalizations of political tolerance, which also enable a longitudinal analysis, using questions that were asked in more than one survey).
In order to measure democratic development, this study uses the Voice and Accountability In-‐ dex developed in the mid-‐1990s by a group of researchers working for the World Bank. It captures the “perceptions of the extent to which a country's citizens are able to participate in selecting their govern-‐ ment, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free media” (Kaufmann, Kraay and Mastruzzi 2009, 6). From 1996 onwards, researchers replicated the study every two years (annually since 2002) for most of the countries in the world (the latest survey took place in 2008 and analyzes 209 countries and disputed territories). For measuring socioeconomic development, a control variable, the study employs the Human Development Index, launched in 1990 by the United Nations Development Programme. Taking into account the inherent limitations of any one-‐dimensional measure of develop-‐ ment that would, by its very definition, ignore either economic or social aspects, the ambition of this index is to offer a single, yet multidimensional and comprehensive, measure of development.
The Comparative Study for Electoral Systems (CSES) offers post-‐election national studies data from around the world. It offers a great deal of information in a comparative manner for variables that
travel unmodified from one country to the other. Its first module was released in 2003 (it contains elec-‐ toral data from 1996-‐2001), the second module was released in advance in 2004 (it contains data from 2001-‐2006 and includes five additional countries compared to the first one) and the third module was released in 2010 (it contains electoral data from 2006-‐2011). Over 601 publications, working papers and presentations rely on data offered by the three CSES modules.39 This study uses data from the second
module of the CSES studies which contains data from elections that took place in 40 nations. It seeks to identify the level of satisfaction with democracy and the impact it has on democracy at macro-‐level.
Gallagher’s Index or the Least Square Index “is a measure of the amount of disproportionality generated by an election outcome, by which is meant the disparity, if any, between the distribution of votes at the election and the allocation of seats.”40 This measurement is used in order to measure the
impact of the electoral system on voting behavior. The Politics of Electoral System published in 2005 by Michael Gallagher and Paul Mitchell was received by the academic community with great deal of enthu-‐ siasm and the calculations for the Index continue to be source of the most reliable electoral dispropor-‐ tionality data. Although the book only analyzes 22 countries over two decades of elections, the authors offer calculations for over 900 elections in over 100 countries on their web site.41 The dates range from
1945 to 2011 and they are kept updated on constant bases as democracies continue to hold elections. In 2006 Benoit and Laver published Party Policies in Modern Democracies and offer an update to a classical measurement of the policy positions of the political parties. They report the policy positions of the parties in the system for 47 old and new democracies, including the countries from Central and Eastern Europe for elections in the early 2000. For the purpose of this study this data set is used in or-‐ der to obtain information on the ideological unity of extreme and mainstream parties. Benoit and Laver
39 http://www.cses.org/resources/results/results.htm. Consulted July 11, 2012.
40 http://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/staff/michael_gallagher/ElSystems/Docts/lsq.php Consulted July 15, 2012. 41 http://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/staff/michael_gallagher/ElSystems/index.php. Consulted July 15, 2012.
continue and expand the work of Hunt and Laver (1992) which were a typical data source in compara-‐ tive political science.42
One opportunity to test whether temporary migration to a more democratic country than one’s country of origin enhances tolerance is offered by the Work and Travel program, which brings every summer in the United States a large number of students from various countries, including a few thou-‐ sands from Romania. To this end, a survey among students from a large state university (“Babeş-‐Bolyai” University Cluj) is a good investigative method. About 12 % of the respondents were enrolled in the program; they were asked whether they were enrolled in a Work & Travel program and, if they did, for how long. They were also asked about other “Western” (i.e., non-‐Work & Travel) experiences. Data were also collected on the respondents’ social and demographic characteristics (years spent in college, age, gender, residence, and religiosity), their position toward granting political rights to their least liked group (political tolerance) and the acceptability of homosexuality, prostitution, abortion and divorce (social tolerance).