(Left to Right: Sarah Birch, Richard Frank, Pippa Norris, and Ferran Martínez i Coma)
On 3 June 2013, Richard Frank and I presented the results of our expert survey at the conference at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. We were part of the first panel on shared with Pippa Norris, Jørgen Elklit, Andrew Reynolds, and Sarah Birch. Our paper (available here) introduces and analyzes pilot stage results of the Electoral Integrity Project's expert survey on Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI). The pilot stage included surveying experts on elections in twenty countries in the second half of 2012.
We define an expert as a political scientist (or social
scientist in a related discipline) who has published or who has other
demonstrated knowledge of the electoral process in a particular country. We understand
demonstrated
knowledge by the following criteria: (1) membership of a relevant research
group, professional network, or organized section of such a group; (2) existing
publications on electoral or other country-specific topics in books, academic journals,
or conference papers; (3) employment at a university or college as a teacher.
Occasionally other social scientists were also used—including law and sociology, or to a lesser degree economics, anthropology, mathematics, or statistics. During the pilot phase, we have sought at least forty experts per country, including both domestic and international experts. The distinction was drawn based upon the location of institutional affiliations, and monitored in the survey through citizenship and country of residence.
You can watch our presentation here, and the video is embedded below.
Overall, the pilot study's results are encouraging and demonstrate substantial external validity when compared to other datasets and mass opinions.
Regarding the former, there is a substantial (although thankfully not total) agreement with existing measures. As a first cut effort at analyzing our results we made an additive index of our forty-nine measures and scaled it to a 100 point scale. Our results suggest that 58% of our index's variance is explained by the 2010 Freedom House index (scaled to 100 for comparability).
Most compelling from a theoretical perspective for us is the relationship between expert and mass perceptions. We include in the PEI survey four questions also included in the sixth wave of the World Values Survey. So far five countries (Ukraine, Romania, Mexico, Ghana, and the Netherlands) have had elections in the pilot time frame and were also included in the WVS sixth wave. See the figure below.
In general, many of the problems of electoral integrity highlighted by our expert survey were similar to those highlighted by election observer reports. In addition to our working paper summarizing the pilot stage, the data used for the study are publicly available at: http://www.electoralintegrityproject.com. We encourage comments and and feedback.
Occasionally other social scientists were also used—including law and sociology, or to a lesser degree economics, anthropology, mathematics, or statistics. During the pilot phase, we have sought at least forty experts per country, including both domestic and international experts. The distinction was drawn based upon the location of institutional affiliations, and monitored in the survey through citizenship and country of residence.
You can watch our presentation here, and the video is embedded below.
Overall, the pilot study's results are encouraging and demonstrate substantial external validity when compared to other datasets and mass opinions.
Regarding the former, there is a substantial (although thankfully not total) agreement with existing measures. As a first cut effort at analyzing our results we made an additive index of our forty-nine measures and scaled it to a 100 point scale. Our results suggest that 58% of our index's variance is explained by the 2010 Freedom House index (scaled to 100 for comparability).
PEI pilot results and Freedom House (2010) measures of political freedom
(Source: Pippa Norris, Ferran Martinez I Coma and Richard W. Frank. The expert survey of Perceptions of Electoral Integrity, pilot study April 2013. Available at www.electoralintegrityproject.com)
A similar agreement is also found with Kelley’s (2012) Quality of Elections (also scaled to 100), although these data are substantially older (2004) than the 2010 Freedom House data.
PEI pilot results and Judith Kelley's (2012) Quality of Elections database
(Source:
Pippa
Norris, Ferran Martinez I Coma and Richard W. Frank. The
expert survey of Perceptions of Electoral Integrity,
pilot study April 2013. Available at www.electoralintegrityproject.com)
Most compelling from a theoretical perspective for us is the relationship between expert and mass perceptions. We include in the PEI survey four questions also included in the sixth wave of the World Values Survey. So far five countries (Ukraine, Romania, Mexico, Ghana, and the Netherlands) have had elections in the pilot time frame and were also included in the WVS sixth wave. See the figure below.
PEI results and the World Values Survey
(Source: Pippa Norris, Ferran Martinez I Coma and Richard W. Frank. The expert survey of Perceptions of Electoral Integrity, pilot study April 2013. Available at www.electoralintegrityproject.com)
In general, many of the problems of electoral integrity highlighted by our expert survey were similar to those highlighted by election observer reports. In addition to our working paper summarizing the pilot stage, the data used for the study are publicly available at: http://www.electoralintegrityproject.com. We encourage comments and and feedback.
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