1. Confidence Variable Information
A Comparison of Confidence in Government Regimes Shelby White, Political Science and International Affairs Dual Major Department of Political Science, University of New Hampshire
Introduction
Results
Discussion
Why is confidence in government important?
Success in public policies and services
Economic stability1
Regime stability
(Figure 2) Dictatorships have the highest mean and median levels of confidence compared to parliamentary democracies and presidential democracies.
(Figure 3) The strip chart shows the dispersion for each regime on an individual basis, where the majority of dictatorship cases are clumped at a higher percentage range than the other two.
(Figure 4) The mosaic plot shows that parliamentary democracies have the largest number of cases (larger box width), dictatorship has the second largest, and presidential democracies have the smallest.
(Figure 1) When controlled with the HDI variable, countries with high HDI scores had 21.99% lower confidence in their institutions than those with low HDI scores.
The Human Development Index is a summary measurement of average achievement in 3 key dimensions of human development4:
A long and happy life: life expectancy at birth
Being knowledgeable: expected and mean years of schooling
Having a decent standard of living: Gross National Income per capita
Figure 1: Controlled Line Chart
Figure 2: Boxplot
Strong governments provide security, political freedoms, environments conducive to economic growth, rule of law, well maintained infrastructure, efficient healthcare opportunities, and proper education2.
When citizens are made aware of failure or weakness in these categories, usually through education, their confidence in their government institutions will decrease.
Research Question: Does the type of regime a country has affect popular confidence in government institutions?
Hypothesis: In a comparison of countries, those citizens with more democratic institutions are more likely to be confident in their government than those with less democratic institutions.
Methods
R Studio:
A data analysis software program that provided all of the data, variables, and the statistical procedures used for this project3.
Figure 3: Strip Chart
Dataset and Variables:
Dataset: “world” contains all of the variables within R Studio (dependent, independent, and control) that were used in analysis.
Dependent Variable: ”confidence” is the percent confidence citizens have in their government institutions on a 0-100% scale (World Values Survey). The dependent variable was used as a numeric variable (0-100%, Figures 1-3) and as a categorical variable (“Low, Med, High”, Figure 4).
Independent Variable: “regime_type3” is type of regime split into three broad categories: dictatorship, parliamentary democracy, and presidential democracy (Cheibub’s Democracy Dictatorship dataset).
Control Variable: “hdi” is Human Development Index scores (2010, United Nations).
Figure 4: Mosaic Plot
The HDI is a good control variable because it only includes the basic needs to survive plus education; poverty, human security, and inequalities are not calculated5.
Since this is a class project, I was limited to the data that the R Studio software provided, which for my project, was only 68 out of 167 countries.
Future Research:
Use a larger sample size of countries to be able to run more accurate tests of statistical significance such as Chi-squared tests.
Use a recent survey of countries to have an accurate representation of confidence levels and updated government regimes.
Ask respondents why they have a certain level of confidence in their particular regime to see what works and what does not.
Confidence Variable Information
Sample Size (n)
68 countries
Mean Popular Confidence
48.9%
Median Popular Confidence
49.51%
Lowest Confidence
6.5% (Peru, dictatorship)
Highest Confidence
99.9% (Vietnam, dictatorship)
References
Conclusion:
Analysis led to rejection of the initial hypothesis: dictatorships had the highest levels of popular confidence, not democracies.
Dictatorships had the highest range of popular confidence: 93.4%
Using the HDI as a control variable supported a later hypothesis that citizens with more education and a better standard of living would be less confident in their government.
“Trust in Government.” Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Accessed April 14,
Rotberg, Robert, Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and Indicators. N.p.
Edwards, Barry and Phillip Pollock III. An R Companion to Political Analysis. SAGE Publications INC, 2018.
“Human Development Index.” United Nations Development Programme. Accessed April 14,
Ibid.