2009/7/3 Pranesh Prakash <[email protected]> > Some very interesting questions are thought through in this > Christopher Shea article in Salon on voters' brain-deadness and > democracy. It would be very interesting to look at the electoral > studies conducted by CSDS from this light. > > <http://www.salon.com/books/it/1999/11/22/voter/print.html>
Interesting, but to me it is stating the obvious though the raw stats are quite a shock. I find it hard to believe that 63% could recall the name of a president who served 2 terms (three if you include his father as well). I wonder if as countries get more developed, and the standard of living increases to a level it is pretty much taken for granted, most of the populace don't identify with the issues facing the country and the world. And to an extent this is also true for the other end of the spectrum where most of the populace are just barely surviving and don't care two hoots about who is running their country, as long as they get to eat and have drinking water. A similar poll in India would be quite interesting indeed. On a related note, I just read this article on Newsweek on why Japan's opposition can't distinguish itself [1]. The excerpt below is interesting: <snip> To be fair, Japan is no longer a country with stark ideological differences on policy, as key issues like pension and budget reform are so complicated they tend to get bogged down in minute detail. As a result, "it's difficult to make black-and-white distinctions in Japan's political culture," says Kazuhisa Kawakami, a politics professor at Meiji Gakuin University. </snip> Kiran [1] http://www.newsweek.com/id/204317/page/1
