Survey of Young Asia Specialists on the Spread of Democracy

I was recently discussing international trends of democracy and good governance with my colleagues Qinghong Wang and Jun Pyon. Our discussion included a survey of prominent policy experts conducted by the Atlantic Monthly. We decided it would be interesting to ask the same questions of younger policy analysts to see whether any generational divide is apparent over democracy's international prospects.

Our online questionnaire can be found here and the original Atlantic Monthly article is here.

Our survey was conducted among young foreign policy experts (members of the Pacific Forum CSIS Young Leaders Program). The sample size was 40, the same number of participants as the original poll. For purposes of comparison, we used the same questions and format as the Atlantic Monthly (AM). The sample was not randomized and is thus not meant to be representative of any population as a whole. The results are, however, meant to reflect the opinions of up-and-coming foreign policy analysts who deal with Asia-Pacific international relations in particular.

The AM group of foreign policy experts had an average age of about 65, while the average age among our sample of Young Leaders was about 30.

Interestingly, Young Leaders are significantly more optimistic about democratic progress since 2000 and moving forward. However, Young Leaders are less confident about the ability of the United States to promote democracy.

The results of the surveys are summarized below. Note that because of rounding, percentages do not always add to 100.

Worldwide, is liberal democracy stronger or weaker than it was in 2000?

Senior policy experts:

28% STRONGER
73% WEAKER

Young Leaders:

53% STRONGER
48% WEAKER

Is the U.S. capable of meaningfully affecting the prospects for democracy in most nondemocratic states?

Senior policy experts:

68% YES
33% NO

Young Leaders:

55% YES
45% NO

Do you believe the proliferation of democratic government is inevitable in the long run?

Senior policy experts:

38% YES
63% NO

Young Leaders:

55% YES
45% NO

We cannot entirely attribute the different outlooks on democracy to generational change because there were other important differences between the surveys:

• Our poll was nearly gender balanced (55% men, 45% women), whereas 95% of the AM respondents were men.

• Nearly all the AM respondents were American. In our survey, USA respondents were a plurality (16), but respondents were also from: Canada (1), China (6), France (1), India (1), Japan (2), Malaysia (1), Philippines (4), Singapore (1), South Korea (5), Taiwan (2).

• Our poll was conducted anonymously. The AM poll did not connect names to responses, but a list of respondents was published in the article.

• Our poll was conducted January-February 2009 with results published in March 2009. The Atlantic Monthly published its poll one year earlier, in March 2008.

Having a more gender balanced and internationally diverse sample of policy experts could certainly matter to opinions of democracy, but it is not clear how. (The AM survey report only shared percentage of yes/no responses; with more data, it would be possible to conduct regression analysis).

As for the time lapse between the surveys, there were a number of challenges to democracy that developed across the globe in 2008 (see the Economist Intelligence Unit's Index of Democracy 2008). Thus, one might expect the later poll to be more pessimistic about democracy's progress and prospects, but in fact, the later numbers are more favorable.

Public recognition of counterterrorism successes and political advances in Iraq increased over 2008. Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008 and came to office in January 2009. One might hypothesize that these developments between the times the two polls were conducted would boost American soft power and the perception that the U.S. can positively influence nondemocratic states. However, the later poll shows greater skepticism of America's ability to promote democracy.

Therefore, this exercise suggests there are important differences in the way that established and upcoming generations of policymakers view democracy in the world and America's role in promoting freedom. Given the relative ease with which survey data was collected and summarized via Google Docs, this online technology could be usefully applied in a future effort to gather responses from current policymakers and Young Leaders simultaneously. This would allow a more detailed and reliable comparison of generational views.

I would like to thank all the Young Leaders who participated in this 'plausibility probe' survey; thanks also to Ana Villavicencio for her help disseminating the questionnaire. For more on Young Leaders' views of democracy, see the recent publication:

Brad Glosserman, ed., "Asian Elections 2007-2008: Regional Security Implications," Issues & Insights, Vol. 8, No. 22, November 2008.

For comments on this exercise and suggestions for future research and analysis, please e-mail me.