Abstract

The paper presented in this WSC 2023 IPS discusses how and why official statistics that are produced according to statistical ethics principles are necessary for democracy in modern states. It argues that the application of the separation of powers doctrine of Montesquieu, which is a common element of modern liberal democracies, requires the existence of accurate information to be available to the branches of government, including impartial and reliable official statistics data. It also argues that regular elections of government “by the people and for the people”, which is the essence of democracy, requires ethically produced official statistics. The paper takes the view that democracy in a modern large-scale society is endangered—actually democracy is not fully democracy—if the ethics principles of official statistics are not followed or not followed fully. The paper provides examples of breaches of ethics principles in democracies and discusses some of the reasons and mechanisms thereof. Thus, it concludes that democracies face the risk of undermining themselves in the cases when they undermine ethical official statistics production. At the same time, nondemocratic systems, such as oligarchies, authoritarian systems and autocracies, in order to reproduce themselves, and avoid democracy from being (re)established, face a more inherent need (compared to democracies’ risk) to subjugate official statistics to the interests of those in power. They do that by not allowing in practice the full and consistent application of statistical ethics. Examples of the latter are provided in the paper. Thus, the paper notes the corollary that promoting the production of official statistics according to global statistical ethics can help foster the transformation of nondemocratic systems to democratic ones. The paper concludes with proposals for steps that can help keep official statistics supporting democracy.