My assessments of democracy in America, overall, are noticeably lower than my fellow political scientists on the numerical scale, but when it came to the questions assessing how "important" any of Trump's given actions were, along with how "normal" or "abnormal" they were, my assessments were consistent with other political scientists. Similarly, I put the country at about the same place with respect to the criteria for democracy. What's going on here?
It has to do with an important element of measurement systems and the creation of a single score based on multiple dimensions. Scroll through the survey and you'll see a bunch of questions given to the public and to experts about the extent to which the US meets certain criteria for democracy, like free speech (my favorite!), judicial independence, and a common understanding of facts. The data are (yes, "are!") presented graphically, so that you can see the proportion of each subsample who agree that the US meets each criterion fully or mostly.
That's a lot of criteria, though! How do you combine all of those into one score for democracy? That depends on how much weight you ascribe to any one criterion. Regular readers know that there are a couple of criteria there to which I ascribe a great deal of weight, but on which the US scores quite poorly now: legislative checks on the executive, and common understanding of facts. Almost nobody in the expert survey agreed that the US meets that latter criterion, and only about 35% of the expert survey thought that we meet the former criterion in the latest wave (who are those people and what are they smoking?!). Where do my colleagues get things really wrong (aside from that weird minority who think that we still have functioning checks and balances)? They overestimate the influence of campaign contributions because the only people who actually know this stuff are those of us who do the research on it. Those of us who have spent our time plugging away at econometric models trying to measure the influence know that it is overstated, but that's not most of the field. I wish they'd listen to their colleagues who do the research rather than the press, but I'm tilting at windmills on this. Getting people to believe math rather than press anecdotes... that goes against every basic human impulse. You humans... I find you illogical.
Basically, though, take a look at the Appendix, and that graph showing expert assessments of democracy in Waves 5 and 6 according to the criteria posed. Mostly, I sort of agree.
And yet, when I assess democracy in America, and put a numerical value on how we're doing, I put a significantly lower number on the country than my colleagues. Why? Weighting. Common understanding of facts. I keep coming back to that on this blog because I think it is a really big deal. Why do I hate liars so much? We need facts. In fact, you should be stockpiling them! Without a common understanding of facts, there is no way back from here. That's why I think that people who compare the current state to, say, the race riots of the 1960s, are missing something. (I type as I hope that things don't descend into violence with those neo-nazi shitheads today). As bad as race riots are, if you can recognize that they occur, and that violence exists, and that it is motivated by race, there is a way forward. America today is awash in so many lies that people cannot sort facts from reality. That is dangerous beyond the telling of it.
What else? I keep coming back to checks and balances. We have a President who has not only clearly engaged in obstruction of justice, he may very well be controlled by a hostile foreign power, but because of a breakdown of the Republican Party, the system of checks and balances no longer operates. This is extremely dangerous. The legislature does not check the executive, and that has serious consequences. I put a great deal of weight on that.
What kinds of things don't matter to me? Voter turnout. The US has a low voter turnout, and most of the "experts" say that participation does not meet some criterion associated with that, but I just don't care. At all. Of course, that's a "negative" on which I put zero weight, but then there are criteria like the number of parties allowed. This is tricky. Technically, we don't disallow minor parties. Whiny goo-goos complain about the two-party system, but what disadvantages them is the first-past-the-post system. I actually want more restrictions on third parties because mostly what they do is create spoiler effects and screw up election results. This is straight-forward election math, but it isn't intuitive to people who aren't steeped in "social choice theory." Also, it pisses people off because it sounds intuitively anti-democratic in a small-d sense. I just don't care.
Really, though, how much weight do we put on the lack of a common understanding of facts? I put a lot of weight on that because without facts, I see a lot of ways that things get worse, and not many ways that things get better.
So, what do you, the reader, take from this? I'm a weirdo. Obviously! Who the hell spends a lovely, summer Sunday morning writing this stuff? Me! I'm strange. That doesn't mean I'm wrong. After all, most of my profession got the 2016 election wrong, and I started this blog because I caught on before they did with respect to the GOP primary. This blog started with a series called, "Trump to Political Science: Drop Dead," referencing a famous headline, "Ford to City: Drop Dead." Almost everybody in the discipline said that Trump had no chance at the GOP nomination, including initially me. By December of 2015, I changed my tune and called bullshit on my colleagues, but the major political science blogs wanted nothing to do with any posts challenging received wisdom about Trump's chances at the nomination. So, in February of 2016, I started this blog, pretty much for the purpose of writing what couldn't be written elsewhere-- that Trump was showing my discipline that they had their heads up their asses. He was outperforming, and stood a good chance of getting the nomination that my colleagues said he couldn't win. I was right, everyone else in my field was wrong.
Does that mean I'm correct now? No. That does not logically follow. I've been wrong about lots of things. I got the 2016 general election wrong, just like most of my discipline, as long as I'm on the topic of 2016. My point is that you can't discount me on the basis of the fact that I'm an outlier in my overall numerical assessment. You should, however, take into consideration that I am an outlier. I am explaining to you, though, my reasoning, and how my perspective differs from other political scientists, quantitatively. My assessment of American democracy, across the battery of questions that Bright Line Watch asked, was not too far from how my colleagues saw things, for any one criterion. I differ significantly in my overall assessment because of the weight I ascribe to the various criteria.
Then again, how much is a point on that 100-point scale? The American National Election Studies survey has, for the last half-century, asked people to rate individuals and groups on a "feeling thermometer," to assess how warmly or coldly they feel. How did they settle on such a cockamamy system? Here is the story that was relayed to me by Merrill Shanks, who was one of my grad school professors. He had been a student of the great Phil Converse, who helped design the NES as it got started. Supposedly, a bunch of them were sitting around, trying to figure out how to assess affect, and Phil had to get up and leave, but before he left, he told everyone something like, "whatever you do, don't do anything stupid like a feeling thermometer." Then, with the great luminary, Converse, gone, they all said, "so, we're good with a feeling thermometer, right?"
And so, for half a century, we have been stuck with the feeling thermometer because Phil Converse had to, I don't know, pick up his kid or something. That part got left out of Merrill's story. This is probably apocryphal anyway. That won't stop me from telling it for decades to come, with the proper warning not to take it literally. Oral history, 'n all. If facts are dead, why bother?
Anyway, my point for today is that, whenever you read one of my posts saying we're screwed, game over, man, game over, remember that my assessment is consistent with other political scientists in terms of any one criterion, but different in terms of how I aggregate those criteria to determine the health of the country overall.
That's how to emptor your caveat. Yes, I know that's not how to parse the phrase. I'm the one who lectures you on the fact that "data" and "media" are plural, so I don't need you to lecture me on Latin. Lighten up. It's not like the country is falling apart, or anything!