This recent survey conducted in Iran claims that most Iranians believe that their authoritarian government is actually largely democratic, support the government's efforts to develop nuclear weapons, and are hostile to the United States (hat tip: Jeffrey Friedman).It is perfectly possible that these poll results really do reflect the majority opinion of the Iranian public. However, the researchers failed to consider an important factor that might bias their results: Iran is a repressive dictatorship where the government often punishes those who express dissident views that question the official line.
In such an environment, Iranians who disagree with the government's positions might hesitate to express those disagreements to foreign pollsters. They might instead toe the official line in order to protect themselves from the secret police. Obviously, good pollsters will promise respondents anonymity. But Iranians - who have lived in a police state for decades - might well distrust the sincerity of such promises. For all they know, the "pollster" who has contacted them is actually a government agent trying to ferret out dissent. Even if they believe the pollster to be sincere, there is still no guarantee that the conversation between pollster and respondent won't be overheard by the secret police.
Fear of punishment gives inhabitants of repressive societies strong incentives to lie to pollsters if they disagree with the government line. Public opinion scholars have long been aware of this problem. For example, this classic study of Nicaraguan public opinion under the Sandinista communist dictatorship showed that many Nicaraguans were only willing to express their true opinions about the government if they believed the pollsters to be affiliated with anticommunist opposition parties. In his brilliant 1995 book Private Truths, Public Lies, economist Timur Kuran documents numerous similar examples of people in repressive societies hiding their true views in order to avoid punishment by the state.
None of this proves that citizens of repressive societies never genuinely support their rulers. Adolf Hitler was genuinely popular in 1930s Germany, for example. It does, however, show that researchers should not take pro-government poll responses in such countries at face value. Scholars have understood the problem for a long time. There is no longer any legitimate excuse for polling organizations to ignore it.
I don't blame Iranians who may have lied to Western pollsters out of fear. I do blame pollsters who fail to consider the possibility that such lying may affect their results.
Democracy doesn't mean much without freedom of the press.
Actually, as I understand it, most Iran experts believe that power is concentrated in the hands of the "Supreme Leader" Ali Khameini, and a few of his advisers and allies. It's a dictatorship in the same sense that, say, the USSR was a dictatorship under Brezhnev. Brezhnev didn't exercise absolute power, but was the head of a small clique (the Politburo), which collectively controlled all the levers of authority. Ditto for Iran's Supreme Leader. Such an arrangement is reasonably described as a dictatorship, as that term is colloquially understood.
Essentially, what one does is have a bag with both black and white marbles, and instruct the respondent that if they draw a white marble to tell the truth (and otherwise, lie). The respondent is also told not to show the marble to the interviewer.
Now, you know the proportion of the marbles that are white (and have shown the respondents that there are equal numbers of each, by the way), so the estimation is simply a matter of probability. Note, however, that this means the sample size must be increased significantly and that in-person interviews are critical. This means that the cost will be far higher than otherwise to get the same level of precision.
I would suspect that the actual survey did not use this technique.
The question is not actually telling the truth. The question is admitting you know it and ARE WILLING to tell it.
I would guess many pollsters would consider the issue a feature, not a bug. After all, it gets the line they want.
See Michigan's Constitutional Affirmative Action Ban vote, where a huge chuck of voters leaving the polling places lied to pollsters and said they opposed the ban after their major in-state employers announced that their offical policy was to oppose the ban.
In the booth they voted the way they wanted, however.
I would go even further and say that polls are meaningless unless the press has a diversity of viewpoint and all facts and viewpoints are freely available.
I have traveled in foreign countries where the press is nominally free but toes a certain line on some issues.
Heck, in our own country, the press can be reliably counted upon to advocate some positions under the guise of providing news. Not surprisingly the opinion polls sway that way too.
Now, I'm not an expert, and the underlying statement may be true. But you should not rely on an argument of authority in this instance, when you don't seem to understand the complexity that such authority gives to the question at hand.
All the Iranian experts I know think Iran, while nowhere near a pure democracy, is the second most democratic state in the Middle East (next to Israel), and whose democracy functions better than many other mixed systems, such as China, Vietnam, most African nations, and (depending on the expert) even some Latin American nations.
Given my druthers, I would prefer to think that the Iranian electorate did not "freely" and "informedly" choose these governments. Given your druthers, you would prefer to think that they did, or you are just expressing what you consider to be a "realist" point of view? Same thinking about the Palestinian elections that saw Hamas installed?
"...Iraq which had no WMDs and presented no threat..." Are you speaking with that certainty from a post-2003 perspective or saying there was no doubt about those matters pre-2003? You would agree that without a doubt Iraq had WMD in 1991 and had demonstrated a willingness to use them, wouldn't you?
3 points:
1. In both cases, the candidates elected had to be preapproved by Iran's clerical authorities. Real reformists (those actually in favor of abolishing the existing system and establishing a true democracy were not allowed to run).
2. The positions up for "election" were not those that had real power (e.g. - the post of Supreme Leader, which is not an elected position).
3. As other commentators have pointed out, there was no free press, or right of true opponents of the goverment to put their views forward.
3 points here too:
1. Iran is surely less democratic than Turkey (which has true contested elections), Lebanon, Kuwait, and several other Middle Eastern states.
2. The other states you compare it too (China, Vietnam, etc.) are not democratic at all (having no opposition parties that are allowed to run elections).
3. The real power in Iran is in fact in the hands of the Supreme Leader and his clerical allies and advisers, who have the right to veto any decisions by the "elected" president and other similar officials. Perhaps this is more "democratic" than, say, Saudi Arabia, but it's not much of a distinction.
Note that democracy is limited in the USA too - the rights of political minorities are protected.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwait
May I remind you about the staged TV "confessions" of Iranian-Americans imprisoned in the Islamic Republic. Took place just a couple of days ago and the main words pounced on by the captors were "...networks formed...", as in conspiracies hatched at academic conferences. This was also the favorite terminology of forced confessions in 1937 under Stalin (I read up on their methodology lately). I am not saying Khamenei is already a Stalin, but he is a wannabe.
I was referring to Kuwait today, not Kuwait pre-2005. But even pre-2005, the 15% of the population of Kuwait who could vote could at lest vote for a legislature with real power and for candidates not preselected by the government. Neither is true in Iran.
I don't think you are trying to be rational about this, and am no longer interesting in discussing this. At no point do you do anything other than make what seems like absurd ascertions based only on truthiness, nor do you seem to give even an inkling of the support you have for any of your positions. Please let me know if you decide you want to explain your reasoning re: Iran in terms of actual facts.
I don't think you are trying to be rational about this. Please let me know if you decide you want to explain your reasoning re: Iran in terms of actual facts. You don't have to pretend you know "Iran experts," Justin. Iran has, apparently, reasonably fraud-free elections. That is not the definition of democracy. "Reformers" regularly have supportive media outlets shut down, those elections are not for the positions of real power, and are only among the candidates allowed by those who do have real power. That isn't a democracy. If you know "Iran experts" who think it is, you ought to ask for a refund.
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