An Incomplete Recipe: One-Dimensional Latent Variables Do Not Capture the Full Flavor of Democratic Support

Authors

Affiliations

Yue Hu

Tsinghua University

Yuehong Cassandra Tai

Pennsylvania State University

Hyein Ko

University of Iowa

Byung-Deuk Woo

Pohang University of Science and Technology

Frederick Solt

University of Iowa

Abstract

Prominent recent works have measured democratic support using a single latent variable that purports to span a single dimension from steadfast opposition to whole-hearted support. This ignores ample evidence that support for democracy is complex and multidimensional. Here we provide a series of validation tests of the sort of cross-national time-series latent variable measures employed in recent research by reference to questions on support for liberal democracy and opposition to its erosion from multiwave surveys conducted around the world. These tests show that, across countries and years, this latent variable is nearly orthogonal to measures of support for contestation and participation; civil liberties; institutional constraints on executive power; and prioritizing democracy over the economy, economic equality, or order. We conclude that support for democracy in any robust sense is simply not well captured by one-dimensional latent variable. Such measures are powerful but researchers must be mindful of their limitations.

Important figures

Figure 1: Correlations Between Democratic Support as a Unidimensional Latent Variable and Polyarchy Survey Items

Figure 2: Correlations Between Democratic Support as a Unidimensional Latent Variable and Civil Liberties Survey Items

Figure 3: Correlations Between Democratic Support as a Unidimensional Latent Variable and Democratic Institutions Survey Items

Figure 4: Correlations Between Democratic Support as a Unidimensional Latent Variable and Prioritization Survey Items

BibTeX citation

@misc{HuTaiSolt2022,
 author={Hu, Yue and Tai, Yuehong Cassandra and Ko, Hyein and Woo, Byung-Deuk and Solt, Frederick},
 title={An Incomplete Recipe: One-Dimensional Latent Variables Do Not Capture the Full Flavor of Democratic Support},
 publisher={SocArXiv},
 year={2023},
 month={February}, 
 url={osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/rym8g/},
 doi={10.31235/osf.io/rym8g/}
}