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GibtEsKeinenGott t1_jc90aki wrote

The democracy index is not scientific. The publication that produces it just asks random blokes of their choosing to rate countries. They do not publish who these people are and what their ratings were. Trash data IMO. From your link, see.

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DoeCommaJohn t1_jc9edxu wrote

There’s a difference between data being unscientific and data being bad. If there were better data available, I’d agree, but the democracy index is still a fine way to show what some experts think of democracies around the world

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GibtEsKeinenGott t1_jc9flt7 wrote

How do you know the people they choose are even experts if they refuse to reveal who these people are? I understand the difference between bad data and unscientific data and to me that is a distinction without a difference. Unless we know who these people are and can clearly see the metrics they are using to objectively measure the level of democracy in these countries, then we are just believing their claims on faith. It is like if a poll of 10 "random" soda experts is published where they rank flavors of various drinks and Coke comes out on top, yet the authors of the poll fail to mention that 8 of them don't like the taste of lemon and 6 of them happen to work for Coca-Cola. That might be important information.

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