Populism And Global Governance
Populist leaders are less likely to provide scientific information to international organizations (IOs) and when they do, the information is often of lower quality. This is because populists have anti-elite and pro-state sovereignty views, which leads them to distrust experts and resist constraints on their country’s sovereignty.
Providing scientific information to IOs goes against these views, as it involves sharing data with international organizations and relying on experts to collect and analyze the data.
Populist leaders are motivated to withhold or distort scientific information, which is necessary for global responses to public health and environmental issues. This can limit the ability of IOs to govern in areas of pressing international concern.
The lack of scientific information can have disastrous effects, degrading the quality of trade flows, agreement enforcement, individual accountability for human rights violations, health outcomes, peacekeeping efforts, and economic decision-making.
The study finds that populist leaders disclose significantly less scientific information to IOs, and when they do furnish it, it is of lower quality than information from non-populist leaders. This relationship holds most consistently for government-supplied scientific indicators as opposed to information estimated by non-governmental sources.
Populism And Information Suppression
Populist leaders intentionally withhold scientific information from international organizations (IOs) for two reasons. Firstly, they disdain scientific experts who staff IOs, leading to reduced engagement with them. Secondly, they are concerned about sovereignty, as IOs are designed to monitor and regulate state behavior, which requires some ceding of sovereignty.
As a result, populist governments report less scientific data to IOs than non-populist governments, and when they do report, the data is often less accurate.
It examines the relationship between populism and scientific information suppression by analyzing the rate of data missingness in the World Bank’s database.
The results show that populist governments report less scientific data to the World Bank than non-populist governments and that this relationship holds more consistently for data provided directly by states rather than subject to imputation or estimation by third parties. It also finds that populist governments report lower-quality data, particularly in the context of greenhouse gas emissions.
The results are robust to include various control variables, including a country’s level of democracy, GDP per capita, and participation in IMF programs. Overall, the study suggests that populism is associated with the suppression of scientific information, which can have significant consequences for global governance and policy-making.
Data Quality And Populism
Many international organizations (IOs) rely on estimation and imputation methodologies to resolve missingness in their datasets, while others report unmodified data furnished by member states.
This article analyzed the source of each World Development Indicator (WDI) variable from the WDI’s metadata and found that 48.7% of scientific variables rely on unmodified data provided directly by states, while 51.3% involve estimation or imputation by a non-state or intergovernmental data provider.
The results show that the entry into office of a populist government is associated with an increase in missingness in scientific variables, particularly those that rely on raw, state-provided data. There is no significant relationship between populism and variables that are estimated or imputed by non-state information providers.
The study also found that populism is associated with a substantial and statistically significant erosion in the quality of state-reported emissions data, with a 25% increase in the gap between state-reported emissions inventories and independent estimates.
The study controlled for various factors, including nationalism, World Bank conditionality, and the size of a country’s fossil fuel and agricultural industries, and found that the results remain robust.
The study also found that the relationship between populism and information suppression is not driven by low-capacity or autocratic states, but rather holds across much of the political and economic spectrum.
Populism And Data Quality
Populist governments tend to provide lower-quality data to international organizations (IOs) such as the United Nations and the World Bank. This is because populist leaders often have anti-elitist and pro-state sovereignty views, which leads them to undermine their domestic capacity to produce scientific data and withhold information from IOs. As a result, data provided by populist governments is often less accurate and of lower quality.
The study finds that populist governments are less likely to supply scientific information to IOs and that this information is often of lower quality. This is particularly true for indicators that rely on data provided directly by member states, rather than those that use data estimated or imputed by non-state information providers.
The study also finds that populist governments tend to simultaneously degrade bureaucratic capacity and intentionally fail to report data, leading to both an erosion in data quality and an increase in data non-reporting. However, there is no consistent correlation between these two forms of suppression.
The World Bank’s backfilling and imputation of missing data may also affect the results, potentially understating the true level of missingness under populist governments. However, the study finds that the Bank’s backfilling rates are higher for populist governments, suggesting that the results may be conservative.
Overall, the study suggests that populism is a significant impediment to IOs’ functions as repositories and providers of scientific data and that policymakers may need to strengthen cooperative efforts to improve data quality and availability.
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