Uncoupling Conceptual Understandings and Political Preferences: A Study of Democratic Attitudes among Singapore’s Highly Educated Young People
Notice bibliographique
Résumé
Democracy is subject to constant and seemingly interminable contestation in academic and policy contexts, and yet, empirically and methodologically robust analysis of what the term means in practice for actual citizens has remained an area of relative lacuna. Admittedly, large-N surveys have attempted to address this research gap by examining attitudes to numerous components of democracy, but without the fine-grained detail required to overcome simply reproducing the focus on liberal procedural, Western precedent-based, top-down approaches to understanding such a complex and varied political system. This article proposes a methodological approach, based on the requirements of comparative political theory and research into how people view democracy. This allows us to explore political attitudes and the meaning of democracy with a bottom-up approach using the methods of repertory grid and in-depth interviews. Singapore is a particularly exciting case for comparative political science: although it has all the advantageous conditions that, according to classic modernization theory, promote the development of democracy, it is still not a democracy.To what extent will the conceptualization of democracy by citizens in a country like Singapore resemble theoretical definitions, and how suitable do they consider democracy to be for Singapore? What are their expectations for a good government or regime? This article examines what highly educated Singaporeans, ranging in age from their twenties to their forties, think about democracy. In doing so, the article also pursues the goal of comparing methods between repertory grid interviews and in-depth interviews in order to work out potential interfaces, and points of connection, between the two methods to allow for the most productive research outcomes. We find that, conceptually, these Singaporeans’ perceptions of democracy appeared very similar to what is usually discussed as electoral democracy in established literature. When evaluating the performance of a government or a regime, however, liberal ideas of freedom and fairness competed with more pragmatic approaches that reflect the principles of progress and success as well as community and performance-focused orientations. As a result, our respondents did not prioritize democratic practices as much as other aspects of governance like efficiency. Our findings on the influence of state ideology on highly educated young people in Singapore strengthen the arguments of political myth as an integration and legitimization strategy in autocratic regimes and democratizing strong states or regimes with a particularly pronounced ideological hegemony.
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Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction machine sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Le volet Gemma est une étiquette directe du modèle pour chaque travail de la base, lue sur la notice réduite au titre. Le volet Codex est un classifieur appris des 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et calibré sur les taux pondérés de l'échantillon; les champs sans appui suffisant ne portent aucun appel Codex. Le mode candidate est l'union des deux volets; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont pas des étiquettes humaines.
Scores du classifieur distillé par catégorie (deux têtes)
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,003 | 0,003 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,000 | 0,001 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,001 | 0,001 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,002 | 0,002 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,004 | 0,002 |
| Communication savante | 0,003 | 0,002 |
| Science ouverte | 0,000 | 0,003 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,001 | 0,002 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,002 | 0,001 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; un appel candidat d’une seule source (Gemma direct ou Codex distillé), pas un consensus.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».