I was a well-wisher at the 27th
anniversary dinner of the Singapore Democratic Party last Saturday night, and in
return, I got a book, Asia Democracy Index 2005. I found it so engrossing
that I started reading it even as speeches were being made. Yes, it was a little
rude of me.
The summary index showed Singapore scoring second
from bottom among 16 countries/territories. We were outdone only by Burma
(Myanmar).
Within the book's
300-plus pages was a treasure trove of data from a survey conducted in the first
half of 2005. They had wanted to do more than these 16 countries, but budget,
logistical or safety issues prevented them from covering some places.
"They" and "them", I think, need to be carefully
spelt out. The book and the survey were commissioned by the Alliance for Reform
and Democracy in Asia (ARDA), based in Singapore and chaired by Chee Soon Juan,
who is also the Secretary-General of the opposition Singapore Democratic
Party.
However, the survey design team comprised 11 human
rights activists, lawyers and academics, only one of whom is known to be
Singaporean or based in Singapore. The team included Law Yuk Kai, the director
of the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, Paul Scott, a professor at Kansai Gaidai
University (Japan), and Nadine Kreisberger, an advisor to the Vice-Speaker of
the Mongolian Parliament. Ms Salbiah Ahmad, a lawyer, is the Singaporean in the
team, though she's based in Malaysia and better known as the founder of the
Malaysian NGO, Sisters in Islam.
Likewise, from a cursory look at their names, the
7-member editorial board for the book did not include anyone from the Singapore
Democratic Party.
Survey
method
As with all surveys conducted across such different
countries, from Nepal to Japan, it was hard to maintain a strictly uniform
survey method, especially when budget seemed to be tight. Basically, however, it
involved a partner organisation or individual researcher in each country
interviewing a minimum of 100 respondents, using a standardised questionnaire
with 22 questions.
How those respondents were selected seemed to be so
variable that one has to be careful in interpreting the results. The only
requirement set out seemed to be to poll "politically-aware" people in the
country. How to define "politically aware" or to find them was left to each
country researcher.
In Bangladesh, the partner organisation interviewed
110 "local-level leaders of major political parties, teachers. small
businessmen, journalists, civil society participants and students."
In Indonesia, they "included reporters, student
activists, pro-democracy and other social movement activists, political party
activists and/or cadres, as well as professionals, business people,
etc."
In some countries, the survey-takers around the
cities and provinces were required to ask pre-qualifying questions. In Myanmar,
"respondents had to answer correctly to ... three questions and listen to radios
more than once a week to be considered politically aware", the 3 pre-qualifying
questions being: "identifying the status of a politician"; knowing the name of
the country's ruling committee; and "awareness of a recent political
event".
Likewise in Thailand, the 2 pre-qualifying
questions were: "Name at least 3 out of 4 political parties" that were then
represented in Parliament (the survey was done during the Thaksin
administration. before the September 2006 coup); and "State the name of the
leader of the Opposition parties". The survey was conducted by graduate students
from the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, fanning out to
several provinces, under the leadership of an assistant professor and a
lecturer.
The chapter on Singapore gave an unacceptably brief
description of the sample selection process:
The survey was conducted by the Association for Democracy in Singapore during the months of April and May 2005. Taking part in the survey were 148 people, comprising members of the general public, university students, NGO members, lawyers and journalists. They were solicited at public forums, university campuses and private meetings.
Somewhat amazingly, far-off Mongolia did best. Its
survey description, 5 times longer than Singapore's, said that it was carried
out by a team of statisticians and political scientists from the National
University of Mongolia, with an initial total of 802 respondents. They used 4
introductory questions to screen the politically aware from the unaware,
reducing the 802 to 556 respondents.
That said, it should be borne in mind that
political openness varies a great deal from one country to another. A
large-scale survey may be dangerous to the liberty of researchers in some
countries.
Moreover, this study may be no worse than
much-touted surveys showing Singapore being tops in economic attractiveness or
having a fair judicial process. Or Changi Airport being number 1 in this and
that. Those surveys often interview samples of businessmen and international
travellers, but again, how are they selected?
As the Overview chapter in this book
said,
Asking the foreign business community about the political openness of a country is vastly different than asking the local civil society. By relying on citizens living in the country for their views, the [Asian Democracy Index] ensures that its respondents are familiar with the systems that they are asked to rate.
Six categories
The 22 questions each allowed 5 possible responses:
Strongly agree, Agree, Don't know, Disagree and Strongly disagree. The formula
for converting the responses into a percentage score is given in the box at
right.
The questions were grouped into 6 categories, the
first of which was Civil rights. In this category, there were 3
questions:
1.1 People can openly question and discuss official
policy without fear.
1.2 The government allows citizens to demonstrate
peacefully.
1.3 Civic associations and political organisations
can freely organise, mobilise and advocate their views.
The average score for the above 3 questions in each
of the 16 countries surveyed can be seen from the chart below. Singapore's score
was 17.3%. Oh dear.
In the next section, I will detail the answers to
one of these 3 questions (#1.3), so you will get a better picture of how that
score came about.
The second category concerned Elections and
political processes, with 5 individual questions:
2.1 Voters can freely choose their preferred
candidates/parties without interference.
2.2 There is free and fair competition among
political parties.
2.3 The election authorities and election officials
are independent, impartial, and effective in guaranteeing free and fair
elections.
2.4 There is a legitimate, non-arbitrary,
transparent process to amend the constitution and laws.
2.5 External interference is a significant problem
in our political process.
The last one stumps me. Is there a typographical
error in the book? Should it not have been a question in the negative? Otherwise
how was it scored?
Anyway, here are the country ratings. Singapore's
36.5% leaves us third from bottom:
Governance and corruption contained 3
questions:
3.1 The government's decision-making is
transparent
3.2 Elected officials and civil servants are held
accountable for their actions.
3.3 The government is responsive to the public
interest.
Singapore got an average score of 39.0% for these 3
questions, putting us more or less average among the various countries
surveyed:
The next category was Media, with 4
questions:
4.1 The media is free and independent form
government or other sources
4.2 Journalists and the media present a diversity
of political views
4.3 The media contributes positively to
democracy
4.4 Journalists have adequate access to public
information
Our average score for these 4 questions was
28.4%.
Rule of law comprised 3
questions.
5.1 The judicial system effectively protects human
rights and democratic principles.
5.2 Constitutional and legal arrangements guarantee
democratic process in practice.
5.3 All military, police and security forces are
subject to civilian control.
In this category, Singapore's average score was
26.9%.
The sixth and last category was Participation
and representation.
6.1 Political parties provide an effective avenue
for citizens' participation in politics.
6.2 Political parties adequately represent the
interests of their constituents.
6.3 Civil society organisations effectively promote
the public interest.
6.4 the rights and interests of vulnerable and
threatened groups are adequately represented in the political system.
Again, Singapore was second from last with
34.3%.
| Formula for scoring
A "Strongly disagree" gets 0 points. "Disagree" gets 1 point. "Don't know" gets 2 points. "Agree" gets 3 points, and "Strongly agree" gets 4 points. The total points are divided by 400 to get the percentage score. Example: if for a certain question, 12% strong disagree, then 12 x 0 = 0 20% disagree, then 20 x 1 = 20 3% don't know, then 3 x 2 = 6 41% agree, then 41 x 3 = 123 24% strongly agree, then 24 x 4 = 96 Total = 245 points. Divided by 400, gives a 61.25% score. * * * The percentage score for a category is the average of the scores for the various questions within that category. |
Details from
four questions
The above charts show average scores for each
category across the 16 countries. For reasons of space, it is impossible for me
to go further into each of the 22 questions, but in order to give readers a
glimpse of the supporting data, I shall touch on 4 particular questions --
chosen randomly just as examples -- comparing Singapore with Hong Kong, another
city-state with a similar level of economy.
From the Civil rights category is this
question:
As you can see, some four-fifths of Singaporeans
either disagreed or strongly disagreed. In Hong Kong, almost the same proportion
agreed or strongly agreed.
From the Elections and political processes
category is this question:
Some 70% of Singaporeans either disagreed or
strongly disagreed. Opinion in Hong Kong was much more mixed.
From the Media category:
Of course, this result doesn't surprise us. Again,
some four-fifths of Singaporeans gave a negative answer. Hong Kongers felt
almost the exact reverse about their media.
Lastly, an example from the Rule of law
category:
Is there anything left for me to say?
In
closing
As I indicated above, skepticism about these
findings can arise from the variability of procedures among the various
countries, and the way respondents were selected.
To some Singaporeans, the involvement of Chee Soon
Juan in ARDA, which commissioned the study, would colour their assessment of the
results, especially considering the relative lack of transparency about the
procedural details on the Singapore side.
It is partly because I anticipated such reactions
that I presented the 4 pie-charts. Were the opinion patterns represented by the
pie-charts more or less what one would expect Singaporeans to say? If so, then
the scorings that were derived from them would be valid.
Moreover, skepticism about Singapore's scores has
to be balanced by the fact that the partner organisations and individuals
conducting the surveys in other countries were also human rights activists. If
one suspects the Singapore results to be unreliable on account of the
involvement of an opposition politician and civil rights activist here, one has
to ask: how did similar activists in other countries still come up with scores
that are better than Singapore's? Weren't they equally motivated to make things
look bad in their countries? Is Chee a blacker devil than all the
others?
Rather than pick on these results, the best thing
to do is to use an approach crucial to the scientific process -- to attempt to
replicate them. I hope political science students in Singapore will take up the
challenge of doing a survey based on exactly the same questions, but with more
rigorous selection of respondents and with a larger sample size. Then we'll
know. 
© Yawning Bread
Ref:yawningbread.org
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