Third Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy, "Building Democracy for Peace, Development, and Human Rights"

WORKSHOP REPORTS: Research

How Can Civil Society Actors Use Public Opinion Research to Improve and Strengthen Democracy?
Organizers: Network of Democracy Research Institutes Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) – South Africa	Moderator: Robert Mattes – South Africa Larry Diamond – USA Rapporteur: Nakatiwa Mulikita – South Africa	Presenter: E. Gyimah-Boadi – Ghana Marta Lagos – Chile Thawilwadee Bureekul – Thailand Olga Gyárfásová – Slovakia

Observations:
Public opinion polling is a very useful diagnostic tool in assessing what citizens think about democracy. In addition, when public opinion polls are conducted across several countries the result is some degree of comparability on the issues being measured.

The workshop presenters provided several key considerations concerning public opinion polling:

It helps to know the geographical, ethnic, and class concentrations of the society in which the polling is being done.
Polling provides a voice to people.
Polling reveals the kind of difficulties that exist about democracy.
Polling helps in understanding people’s prejudices and in mobilizing people to participate in democracy.
Polling helps to open up a society.
Polling has an impact on the society at large; in and through the media and political actors it helps people to know about themselves.

Key Issues:

Surveys are a form of democratic expression of popular sentiments because sometimes the political systems themselves may not be democratic.
Funding institutions may impact on how survey results are received, particularly by the government.
The ways in which people link public opinion surveys with their work have an impact on public attitudes to surveys.
Survey results can contribute to shaping public attitudes.
Polls can be misused to legitimize undemocratic values.
Political parties sometimes dislike opinion polls that they do not control.

Recommendations:

The media should be helped in developing editorial content to increase reporting about democracy.
Researchers who are also activists should use survey data to identify gaps in democratization for the sake of more effective activism.
Surveys should be standardized to enable the comparison of survey results and to enhance their credibility and trust in their results.
Use assessments from experts and the public to gain and enhance credibility and trust in survey results.
Work with all public opinion groups (stakeholders) in conceptualizing a survey. Civil society, for example, should provide input into the design of a questionnaire.
Provide training for journalists, women’s groups, human rights groups, etc., on how to understand public opinion surveys so they can interpret, use, and disseminate the results and correct errors in survey reports.
Survey and research concepts should be translated into local languages in order to be “localized.”
Find ways to help politicians relate to opinion surveys.

Network of Democracy Research Institutes Part One: The State of the Network
Moderator: Marc F. Plattner – USA Rapporteur: Anja Håvedal – Sweden	Presenter: Thomas W. Skladony – USA
Network of Democracy Research Institutes Part Two: The Quality of Democracy
Moderator: Larry Diamond – USA Rapporteur: Anja Håvedal – Sweden	Presenter: Robert Mattes – South Africa Uri Dromi – Israel Thawilwadee Bureekul – Thailand Olga Gyárfásová – Slovakia

Part One: The State of the Network

The workshop began with an overview of the Network of Democracy Research Institutes (NDRI), which is a functional network of the World Movement for Democracy that is administered by the International Forum for International Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy. The NDRI has grown from 29 member institutions in February 2003 to 48 in February 2004. This growth has led, in turn, to expansion of the content of Democracy Research News, the Network’s electronic newsletter, which will increase from a quarterly to a bi-monthly publication in 2004. In addition to the newsletter, the NDRI also circulates a weekly e-mail message, entitled “Worth Reading” that provides information about a recommended book, article, or other piece of research on democracy, and conducts various events and programs, such as roundtable discussions on the role of think tanks in new democracies and training workshops for senior managers and administrators of member institutes. It was noted that while the NDRI is well represented in most parts of the world—especially in Eastern and Central Europe—it only has three members in all of Latin America. Additional recruitment thus needs to be done in this region.

In the discussion that followed, NDRI members reported on new activities and asked for feedback on their research. One participant said that language barriers might be a reason why there were only three NDRI members from Latin America.

Recommendations:

Circulating “Worth Reading” items in additional languages
Translating important works on democracy into major world languages
Translating selected NDRI publications from native languages into English
Developing more regional collaborative projects
Developing an Africa-wide democracy studies center with a library, seminar series, and fellowship opportunities.

Part Two: The Quality of Democracy

Observations and Challenges:
In the years following recent democratic transitions, scholars typically have begun developing and testing quantitative indicators of the quality of democracy, including some that may be used in cross-national research. Three NDRI institutes undertake such work. The Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa), the Israel Democracy Institute, and King Prajadhipok’s Institute (Thailand) conduct democracy audits in their respective countries by gathering empirical data and conducting public opinion surveys. Among the issues common to most countries that do such research are questions about popular control over government actors, the level of social and economic inequality, governmental stability, corruption, and the rule of law. Ol’ga Gyárfásová of the Institute for Public Affairs described the Global Report on the State of Society published by her organization, which includes some empirical data but consists primarily of descriptive, narrative essays on various aspects of social and political life. These essays, in her view, also provide important insights into the quality of democracy in Slovakia.

During the discussion, some workshop participants argued that qualitative country reports provide a rich context that purely quantitative studies do not. Others were skeptical that complex questions of the quality of democracy could be captured by an index or set of indicators. Nonetheless, others supported the development of such indexes and asked for advice on how to do so in their countries. Several participants asked about the practical difficulties of developing sets of questions that could be used worldwide, so that valid international comparisons could be made, and one participant recommended the creation of a standard measure that could locate every country in the world on a continuum of democratic quality.

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