Emil O W Kirkegaard

how much of the residual on Singapore is simply due to biases in the opinions of the reviewers about its political choices?

personally I think it is vastly nicer than e.g. Greece....

Reference appreciated-- my point concerned the interpretation of certain items listed under "personal rights" and "press freedom," but I think the most likely conclusion is that my preferences simply differ in certain slight but relevant respects from the western liberal norm.

I would rather ban street protests than have to cross one to get into my building to go to work, for instance. I would rather ban libel and enforce the ban stringently than allow the media to more actively mislead the public. Things like that.

If so, then considering the likely audience, the factor score is probably correct for the average reader and the perceived deviation is merely relative to my subjective policy preferences.

As I said, it doesn't matter if you exclude the political indicators you don't like.