Measuring the Meaning of Democracy – Methods of Differentiation in a Singapore Case Study

There are more and more doubts about the validity of the thesis of a worldwide overwhelming support for democracy in current research on attitudes toward democracy show a diverging understanding of democracy in countries beyond the west in opposition to previous assumptions of a universal homogenous understanding of democracy. This turning away from the euro-centrist hegemony (Yildiz 2012) of concepts of the ‘D-word’ (Bratton 2010) was accompanied by a critical review of methodological approaches. Given these methodological challenges, literature discusses the requirements of more differentiated approaches (Yildiz 2012) or respectively mixed-method approaches (Pickel 2009). This paper will argue that the innovative methodological dynamics on research of understanding of democracy should be proceeded (Schubert 2012, 2016, Cho 2015) in a combined approach of Repertory Grid and Semantic Differentials in a Singaporean case study. Singapore is a particular interesting case as it is a good example for contradictory results of survey research and measuring the quality of democracy and for this reason one of the classical outliers. While the majority of Singaporeans rate their country on a scale from 1 “not democratic at all” to 10 “complete democracy” between 7 and 8 (World Values Survey 2010-14), Freedom House (2014) rates Singapore as “partly free” only . At the same time Singapore is an excellent example of an only partly free but, not only economically, very successful country. The Repertory Grid method’s specific advantages are that the initial data is qualitative, using the language, the words and the associations of the respondents, while the analysis uses statistical methods, which allows a comparison of the concepts and meanings. And as the results are based directly on the individual value context of the respondents, problems of equivalence, social desirability and paying lip-service are reduced. Therefore, the use of Repertory-Grid allows an entirely new approach to cross-country and cross-culture research, new insights in the field of international comparison and a more differentiated understanding of what democracy, for example, means to people. As there are clearly limits to a large-scale face-to-face implementation of Repertory Grid, as interviews take time and related expenses are relatively high compared to standardized surveys, representative samples and thereby generalizable results are hardly possible. A methodological solution would be an online-survey following the face-to-face interviews (Kaulartzs/Heckmann 2014). On the basis of Repertory Grid face-to face interviews valid polarity profiles will be constructed to create polarity profiles for Semantic Differentials – a method, like Repertory Grid to measure the connotative or affective meaning of objects, but in a quantitative logic so that representativity will be achievable. The paper would like to make a contribution to understanding the concept of democracy in countries beyond the west as well as to the discussion on the appropriate methodological approach when it comes to the understanding of abstract concepts like democracy beyond western normativity.