Poll Finds Widespread Support for Democracy Worldwide

By Eric Green

Even though support for democracy is widespread worldwide, advanced democracies are not always fulfilling the needs of their citizens, a public opinion analyst tells America.gov.

Steven Kull, director of the Washington-based WorldPublicOpinion.org, says citizens of a country can become dissatisfied with democracy if they are convinced their government is not trying to "serve the will of the people."

Kull commented following the May 12 release of his group's poll of 19 nations. The poll found broad public support for the principles of democracy, but, in nearly every nation surveyed, majorities are "dissatisfied with how responsive their government is to the will of the people."

The poll of public attitudes toward democracy included respondents in the United States, Great Britain, France, China, India and Russia, among the nations surveyed.

WorldPublicOpinion.org describes itself as an international collaborative project aimed at giving "voice to public opinion around the world on international issues." The project is managed by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes.

Kull said citizens of some authoritarian nations, such as China, have confidence their government "is actually trying to do what's best for the people, and they perceive that the government is more attentive and responsive to the will of the people than in democracies." However, Kull said, citizens of authoritarian nations also want their governments to be more democratic.

The pollster suggested governments such as the United State s should do more domestic polling of its citizens, in the same way the State Department polls public attitudes abroad. The polling, he said, would be aimed at helping policymakers understand better which public policy issues are important to citizens. The polling could be based on information from multiple sources, asking questions in many different ways, said Kull.

This survey of citizens' attitudes toward democracy, said Kull, is part of a larger series of polling by his group on different aspects of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, created 60 years ago. Other polls have surveyed attitudes on women's rights, racial equality and freedom of the press. The poll on press freedom, released April 30, found worldwide support "for the media to be free to publish news and ideas without government control."

Kull said that "perhaps the most important point of all" from the poll on democracy is that the public in democratic states does not always think the "outcome of competing interests" in a country will result in something "reflective of the will of the people."

In a press release announcing the poll results, Kull said that "most see their governments as primarily serving big interests rather than the people as a whole." Kull said the "perception that governments are not responsive to the popular will appears to be contributing to the low levels of confidence in government found around the world."

In a positive assessment about democracy, the poll found that majorities in all nations surveyed said "government leaders should be selected through elections in which all citizens can vote," a principle enunciated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Democracy Expert Discusses Poll's Implications

Thomas Carothers, an expert on the subject of building democracies, said the policy concern is that it becomes "particularly dangerous when you have weak or fragile democratic regimes where the citizens are really dissatisfied and feel that the government doesn't care about them."

In such circumstances, "people tend to vote in" individuals outside the regular political system who appeal to a "disgruntled electorate," Carothers said.

"This raises the prospect of a breakdown of the existing party order or system," said Carothers, who is the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's vice president for studies on international politics and governance.

Carothers said the election of such self-styled populists as Presidents Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador resulted from citizen frustration based on the feeling that the countries' previous governments were "unresponsive."

Carothers said that certain democracies have experienced a "fairly low level of public satisfaction with government over the last 20 to 30 years. This has been a fact for awhile."

More about the poll on democracy ( http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/home_page/482.php?lb=hmpg1&pnt=482&nid=&id= ) is on the WorldPublicOpinion.org Web site.

For additional information, see "Universal Declaration of Human Rights Remains Relevant ( http://www.america.gov/st/hr-english/2008/May/20080501173517ajesrom0.2817652.html?CP.rss=true )."

( http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm )

Source: U.S. Department of State

judythpiazza@newsblaze.com