What Kind of Democracy Do We All Support? How Partisan Interest Impacts a Citizen’s Conceptualization of Democracy

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231152784
• Author: James D. Bryan
• Date: 01 September 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 56(10) 1597–1627

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00104140231152784

journals.sagepub.com/home/cps

What Kind of Democracy

Do We All Support? How

Partisan Interest Impacts

a Citizen’s

Conceptualization of

Democracy

James D. Bryan

1



Abstract

Despite waves of democratic backsliding over the last decade, most global

citizens still claim to support democracy. On the other hand, many citizens

become more supportive of specif‌ic anti-democratic actions when their

preferred political side can benef‌it. How, then, do citizens justify their

consistent “explicit support for democracy”with their more malleable

support for the implementation of liberal democracy? This paper uses cross-

national survey data from 74 countries and two methods—a standard cross-

sectional analysis and a within-country variation design—to show that a

citizen’s conceptualization of democracy, or what democracy means to them,

is subject to partisan-motivated reasoning. In other words, citizens are more

likely to conceptualize democracy in illiberal terms, like emphasizing the need

for obeying authority, when their preferred political party is in power. The

f‌indings suggest one’s conception of democracy can be a f‌luid attitude that

citizens mold to match their partisan self-interest.

1

American University, Washington, DC, USA

Corresponding Author:

James D. Bryan, School of International Service, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave

NW, Washington, DC 20016-8007, USA.

Email: jb6508b@student.american.edu

Keywords

support for democracy, conceptualization of democracy, democratic

backsliding, polarization, partisanship

Introduction

On the night of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, ViktorOrb ´

an, the right-wing

illiberal leader of Hungary, released a message on Facebook saying: “de-

mocracy is still alive.”The irony is clear, as Orb´

an has slowly dismantled

democracy in Hungary, while Trump challenged longstanding norms in the

United States (Lührmann et al., 2020). The phenomenon of elected leaders

claiming to support democracy while simultaneously attacking the very

democratic institutions that brought them to power has characterized the

global “third wave of autocratization”(Lührmann & Lindberg, 2019).

Scholars have also observed a similar divide between explicitly claiming to

support democracy and support for individual tenets of liberal democracy in

public opinion surveys. The literature examining attitudes among the mass

public, however, has typically either analyzed changes to these two concepts

together or not investigated how and why they can change differently. From

the Orb´

an quote above, however, it appears that the illiberal leader has a

different def‌inition of “democracy”than political scientists (see Coppedge

et al., 2011) or his partisan opponents. How, then, does partisan self-interest

differentially impact whether citizens explicitly claim to support democracy

versus their support for potential anti-democratic actions? Is this difference

explained by a partisan-motivated change in their understanding of what

democracy means?

The literature surrounding support for democracy is broad and robust.

Despite being a somewhat vague concept, the literature typically oper-

ationalizes support for democracy using survey questions that ask: whether

respondents believe democracy is appropriate and desirable; to compare

democracy to an undemocratic alternative; or to evaluate undemocratic ac-

tions or forms of government (Claassen, 2020, p. 122). Responses to these

questions have been shown to predict the prospects for democracy (Claassen,

2020;Inglehart & Welzel, 2005;Qi & Shin, 2011), impact individual voter

behavior (Booth & Seligson, 2009;Gunther et al., 2007), and other non-voting

forms of political participation (Bakule, 2021). These survey questions,

however, often measure different constructs and many citizens appear to hold

contradictory views (Ariely & Davidov, 2011;Schedler & Sarsf‌ield, 2007).

Despite this f‌inding and the knowledge that these attitudes are consequential,

the literature has not thoroughly investigated how certain events can have a

differential impact on citizens’explicit support for democracy versus their

preference for specif‌ic actions that are antithetical to liberal democracy.

1598 Comparative Political Studies 56(10)