An Incomplete Recipe: One-Dimensional Latent Variables Do Not Capture the Full Flavor of Democratic Support
Hu, Yue, Yuehong Cassandra Tai, Hyein Ko, Byung-Deuk Woo, and Frederick Solt. 2025. “An Incomplete Recipe: One-Dimensional Latent Variables Do Not Capture the Full Flavor of Democratic Support.” Research & Politics 12(2):1-7.
Abstract
Prominent recent works have measured democratic support using a single latent variable that purports to span a single dimension from steadfast opposition to whole-hearted support. This ignores ample evidence that support for democracy is complex and multidimensional. Here we provide a series of validation tests of the sort of cross-national time-series latent variable measures employed in recent research by reference to questions on support for liberal democracy and opposition to its erosion from multi-wave surveys conducted around the world. These tests show that, across countries and years, this latent variable is nearly orthogonal to measures of support for contestation and participation; civil liberties; institutional constraints on executive power; and prioritizing democracy over the economy, economic equality, or order. We conclude that support for democracy in any robust sense is simply not well captured by one-dimensional latent variable. Such measures are powerful but researchers must be mindful of their limitations.
Important figures
BibTeX citation
@article{HuTaiKoWooSolt2025,
author={Hu, Yue and Tai, Yuehong Cassandra and Ko, Hyein and Woo, Byung-Deuk and Solt, Frederick},
title={An Incomplete Recipe: One-Dimensional Latent Variables Do Not Capture the Full Flavor of Democratic Support},
journal={Research \& Politics},
year={2025},
volume={12},
number={2},
pages={1-7}
}