No apologies for the convoluted tense in that – bear with me.
What I ve been thinking about recently is an engineering approach to amatuer pol-sci: Namely which manageable raft of metrics ought I to define now, to set a baseline and then to track regularly going forward, in order to work out what the delivery trends are on the areas of policy, beyond the ethical, which define our daily lives. Now this gets thorny and complicated really quickly if you try to pack everything in that is important to you. (female deaths from miscarriage per 1000 of population under 50, for example, is one I thought up and then discarded with heavy heart). So in the end any raft of metrics that is manageable will be crassly subjects to Gödel’s phenomenon – incomplete AND inconsistent. So, while aware of the imperfections, I still think it is important ante post to define the measures I would use to track how policies are shaping up. And it occurred to me that the societies with which I have alot of contact and emotional or time investment in all have had elections within the last year or are about to have an election within the next month. So NOW would be a good time to set the measurement strategy and start collecting data. In some cases data sourcing might be more tricky and interpretive than ideal, but then again – hey ho, as the scientific term would have it.
Ideally I would like to follow these metrics for Austria, Germany, the UK, Denmark, The USA. While this list might seem random, these are the countries in which I spend or have spent most of my life and about which I would claim to have some understanding. I would agree that France, Poland, Brasil, Indonesia… etc would all be societies which exert a huge impact on the world, but the fact is that I personally have no understanding of how to connect the metrics to the political discourse in those societies. So for his reason Im going to concentrate on what i can hope to understand.
The Metrics are:
1. Median Household Income
- Reflects real-world financial well-being and whether wages are growing.
2. Consumer Price Index (CPI)
- Tracks inflation, especially for essential goods like food, housing, and energy.
3. Gasoline Prices
- A highly visible cost affecting households and a reflection of energy policy impacts.
4. Unemployment Rate
- A baseline economic health metric showing overall job availability.
5. New Aggregate Jobs Added
- A direct measure of the administration’s success in job creation, broken down by sector.
6. Healthcare Coverage Rates
- Indicates progress on social equity and access to essential services.
7. Civic Trust Metrics
- Voter turn-out
- Trust in government statistics
- Captures public sentiment and societal cohesion under the presidency.
8. Greenhouse Gas Emissions
- Tracks environmental impact and success in addressing climate change goals.
Now, most of these metrics are closely and well defined with relatively easy sources of data or information. So the engineer in my is satisfied. BUT Nr 7 – Civic Trust is a slightly different beast, so this is what i came up with as potential sources and surveys:
1. Pew Research Center
- Why: Pew is one of the most respected organizations for tracking public opinion on trust in government, both federal and state. They often release detailed reports with historical trends, demographic breakdowns, and thematic insights.
- Where: https://www.pewresearch.org
2. Gallup
- Why: Gallup conducts long-standing surveys on trust in government institutions (executive, legislative, and judicial branches), as well as public confidence in governance. Their “Confidence in Institutions” survey is particularly useful.
- Where: https://www.gallup.com
3. Edelman Trust Barometer
- Why: The Edelman Trust Barometer is an annual global survey that includes trust in government alongside business, NGOs, and media.
- Where: https://www.edelman.com/trust
4. American National Election Studies (ANES)
- Why: ANES collects data on political attitudes and behaviors, including trust in government, during election cycles. Their datasets provide a rich historical perspective on trust trends tied to specific administrations.
- Where: https://electionstudies.org
5. World Values Survey (WVS)
- Why: While global, WVS includes data specific to the U.S. on trust in institutions, including government, and tracks long-term changes in societal values.
- Where: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org
So as an ongoing project, I am going to start collecting, collating and working out how to present these datasets going forward. Possibly indexing to the start of each relevant administrative period. Should be an interesting way to refer and infer into the narrative im trying to build here: Reasoned argument in passionate defence of democracy.
