Measuring Democracy Beyond Voter Turnout
Voter turnout is the easiest thing to count, but it isn't the same as the thing we want to measure. This episode starts with the "parliament" — the informal table of friends arguing politics over coffee and beer — and uses it to pry open the measurement problem underneath a listener's question: how do we actually gauge political engagement and disengagement? The research points to volunteering, national service, early-childhood interventions, even sleep. Then comes the country comparison: high-turnout Belgium, Sweden, and Australia versus low-turnout Switzerland, Chile, and the United States…
The skinny
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