Sep 15, 2009
Barak

Happy Democracy Day!

partyToday is the International Day of Democracy.  In celebration, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, an organization of Parliamentary democracies, released a poll showing overwhelming support for democracy in a range of countries around the world.  Some of the more surprising finds:

  • 95% of Chinese feel it is either very important or somewhat important to be able to live in a democracy.
  • 86% of Pakistanis feel it is either very important or somewhat important to be able to live in a democracy.
  • 99% of Egyptians feel it is either very important or somewhat important to be able to live in a democracy.

1 Comment

  • I wonder how those proportions are related to levels of political freedom in the respective countries. (Based on your N=3 above, it looks like a roughly negative correlation.) For that matter, I wonder how the UMD group was able to run such a poll in autocratic states like China and Egypt.

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Founded in 2004, Democracy and Society is a biannual print journal published by the Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University. The D&S Blog provides web-only content, including special reports and investigative series, on issues relating to democracy and development.

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