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ComparativePolitics
October 2003
Since the collapse of Communism,democracyhas attaineda positive image in virtually every country in the world. But these favorableopinions are often superficial,
and unless they are accompaniedby more deeply rooted tolerance, trust,and participation, the chances are poor that effective democracywill be present at the societal
level. In striking contrast to Seligson's unproven cross-level assumption, mere lip
service to democracyis not necessarily linked with actual democracyat the societal
level: at this point in history, it is almost as strong in authoritariansocieties or unstable democraciesas in stable democracies.
In contrast, the linkage between a more deeply rooted syndrome of self-expression and effective democracyis remarkablystrong.A controversialbody of literature
that goes back to Lipset and Almond and Verba is basically correct: a specific type
of political cultureseems to be an essential preconditionof effective democracy.4
Misconceptions of the Ecological Fallacy
Seligson's argumentis based on a misconception of the problem of cross-level inferences. This misconception is its crucial flaw. It also involves a minor problem.First,
Seligson equates aggregating individual level responses with the individualisticfallacy, as if aggregating such responses were inherentlywrong. Actually, aggregating
individuallevel attitudesto the national level is a perfectly legitimate procedureand
is essential in any attemptto depict the features of national mass cultures.The individualistic fallacy consists in making the incorrect assumption that an individual
level relationshipalso has similar strengthand directionat the aggregatelevel.
Seligson's crucial misconception is that cross-nationalcorrelationsare spuriousif
they are not also presentat the individuallevel within each nation. Deciding whether
a relationshipis genuine or spurious,on the basis of whetherthis relationshipoccurs
at anotherlevel of analysis, is exactly what Robinson warnedagainst;it is an unwarrantedcross-level inference. Whetheror not a relationshipis spurious,can be determined only by evidence at the same level of analysis. Thus, in Robinson's classic
case, the question of whether or not individualAfrican-Americanswere voting for
segregationistcandidatescould only be decided by individual level evidence, not by
state level correlations. The methodological axiom on which Seligson bases his
analysis is a clear misinterpretationof the problem posed by the level of analysis.
Some examples will demonstratethis point.
In Robinson's case, the fact that electoral units with high percentagesof AfricanAmericans tended to elect segregationistrepresentativesdid not mean that AfricanAmericans were segregationists. The opposite was true. Conversely, the fact that
African-Americanswere not segregationistdid not mean that the districtlevel linkage between racial composition and segregationistpolicies was spurious.The correlation between race and electoral behavior reversed its sign when one moved from
62
ComparativePolitics
October2003
equally to Inglehart'soriginal findings and to his more recent work: societies with
relatively high levels of interpersonal trust and life satisfaction are significantly
more likely to have democraticinstitutionsthan societies with lower levels, and this
linkage is by no means spurious.Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Inglehartand
othershave identified a broadersyndromeof self-expression values that includes not
only interpersonaltrust and life satisfactionbut also several other attitudesthat seem
to play even more importantroles in promoting democracy.6The respectivepublics'
locations on this self-expression values dimension, together with economic indicators, explain roughly 80 percent of the variance in democratic institutions. The
dependentvariablein this analysis is an indicatorof democraticinstitutionsthat will
be referredto as effective democracy.
Assyeleit
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cancel each other out.11 Following the law of large numbers,this reduction of error
becomes more pronounced as the number of individuals being aggregated rises.
Consequently, the random term becomes smaller, and the systematic correlation
larger, at higher levels of aggregation. Consequently, aggregation to the national
level does not produce spurious correlations. Quite the contrary,aggregation often
reveals systematic correlationsthat may be hidden by measurementerrorat the individual level within nations. Hence the syndrome of self-expression values is much
65
ComparativePolitics
October 2003
more pronounced at the aggregate national level than at the individual level within
nations (compare columns 1 and 3 in Table 1). As Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson
argue, analysis at the aggregate level often provides a more accurate view of the
underlyingrelationshipsthan is availablefrom individuallevel analysis.12
The strengthof the correlationsat the pooled individuallevel falls between these
two extremes (compare column 2 with columns 1 and 3 in Table 1). At the pooled
individual level the variation in an attitude is composed of the deviations from the
mean within nations, which may be randomto a relativelylarge degree, and the deviations from the mean between nations, which are largely systematic. Thus, at the
pooled individuallevel there is more systematic variationthan at the individuallevel
within nations, and, in turn, the pooled individual level entails more randomvariation than the aggregate level. The factor loadings of the self-expression values syndrome thereforeincrease from the individuallevel within nations to the pooled individual level to the aggregate level.
In short, relatively weak correlations at the individual level do not indicate that
relatively strong aggregate level correlations are somehow false or spurious.Quite
the contrary,aggregate correlationsmay reveal linkages that are obscuredby random
measurementerrorsat the individuallevel. Moreover,the aggregate level is precisely
the level at which democracyexists: democracyis an attributeof nations,not of individuals. Hence, if one is interested in the impact of mass attitudes on democracy,
what matters is a society's mass tendency in these attitudes,not the individuallevel
attitudinalstructure,as Seligson assumes.
Effective Democracy Since democraticinstitutionswill be the dependentvariable,
it is importantto measure them with reliable indicators.In particular,it is crucial to
differentiatebetween merely formal democracy, or electoral democracy,and effective democracy.
Democracy is central to people's lives because it establishes civil and political
rights that enable them to make free choices. Providing legal guaranteesof these
rights creates formal democracy,which is a necessary component of democracy.But
formal rights alone are not sufficient. Formal rights are effective only in so far as
elites respect these rights in their actual behavior. Law-abiding elite behavior, or
"elite integrity,"is an expression of the rule of law that, as Rose and others have
pointed out, distinguishes effective democracy from formal democracy.13Hence the
measure of effective democracy combines formal democracy (freedom rights) and
elite integrity.The scope of freedom rights is weighted by the extent to which elite
integrityis present,in orderto measureeffective democracy.14
Freedom rights are measuredusing the combined Freedom House scores for civil
and political rights.15The scores from Freedom House range from 1 to 7 on each of
the two scales, with 1 indicating the highest and 7 the lowest level of freedom (that
66
Even if a country comes close to a maximum elite integrity of 1.0 (that is, almost no
elite corruption),the weighting procedurewould not compensate for a low level of
freedom rights. When a regime reaches only five percent of the possible maximum
in the freedom rights measure, a maximum elite integrity of 1.0 can not do more
than reproducethese five percent.21In contrast, a freedom rights level close to the
maximum of 100 percent can be severely devalued if elite integrity is so low that it
reaches only a small fraction of 1.0. Hence given freedom rights levels are devalued
to the degree that elite integrityis absent, reflecting that given constitutionalguarantees are made ineffective in proportion to elite corruption. High levels of elite
integrity can not produce effective democracy, in the absence of freedom rights.
High levels of freedom rights, in contrast, produce formal democracy, but formal
democracy is effective only to the degree that elites base their activities on rights
instead of bribes.
67
ComparativePolitics
October2003
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68
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October2003
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73
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October2003
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on S~f-IExprosslon I 90O
Malr~ssEmnphaslsa
found that individual supportfor democracy is determinedfar more by instrumental
motives than by normativecommitmentsto the values that are inherentto democracy. This finding is perfectly replicatedin the analysis of the WorldValues Surveys, as
Table 3 shows. Although there is a linkage between supportfor democracyand selfexpression values at the individuallevel (see Model 2), what people think about the
performanceof democracyin runningthe economy and maintaininglaw and orderis
a much better predictorof their overt supportfor democracy (comparethe explained
variances of Models 1 and 2). To be sure, people with strong emphasis on selfexpression almost always preferdemocracy to autocracy,but there is a large number
of people who supportdemocracyfor reasons of expected performance,even if their
emphasis on self-expression is weak. Hence overt support for democracyis a poor
indicator of intrinsic support,since overt supportis inflated by instrumentallymotivated lip service.
Conclusion
In analyzing data from the 1981 WorldValues Surveys, Inglehartfound that societies
with relativelyhigh levels of interpersonaltrustand life satisfactionwere much more
74
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ComparativePolitics
October2003
Appendix
National aggregates of self-expression values have been calculated runningthe factor analysis shown in Table 1 across the time-pooled aggregateddata set of the World
Values Surveys, including 137 nation per wave units. The time-pooled data matrix
provides aggregates of self-expression values from the Second WorldValues Survey
(about 1990) for thirty-four countries, including Argentina, Austria, Belarus,
Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Germany (East),
Germany (West), Finland, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland,
Italy, Japan, Latvia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Portugal, Russia,
South Korea, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey,and the U.S.A.
76
77
ComparativePolitics
October2003
78
79