Public Opinion Research In Emerging Democracies: Are The Processes Different?

This paper outlines the larger methodological, logistical and political challenges confronting survey researchers in emerging democracies in developing country contexts, particularly in Africa. Overcoming these challenges often means that comparative social scientific surveys of public opinion are designed, executed, and received in very different ways than in the West. But rather than simply seeing these differences as blemishes that need to be gradually ameliorated, we may have much more to learn from the globalization of public opinion research than the simple accumulation of more data from exotic settings.