Conceptualizing and measuring support for democracy: a new approach

Christopher  Claassen; Kathrin  Ackermann; Eri  Bertsou; Lucas  Borba; Ryan E. Carlin; Amnon Cavari; Sirianne  Dahlum; Sergiu  Gherghina; Darren  Hawkins; Yphtach  Lelkes; Pedro C. Magalhães; Robert Mattes; Maurits J. Meijers; Anja  Neundorf; Dániel Oross; Aykut  Öztürk; Rodolfo  Sarsfield; Darin  Self; Ben  Stanley; Tsung-han Tsai; Andrej Zaslove; Elizabeth J. Zechmeister

doi:10.1177/00104140241259458

Conceptualizing and measuring support for democracy: a new approach

Christopher Claassen^*, Kathrin Ackermann, Eri Bertsou, Lucas Borba, Ryan E. Carlin, Amnon Cavari, Sirianne Dahlum, Sergiu Gherghina, Darren Hawkins, Yphtach Lelkes, Pedro C. Magalhães, Robert Mattes, Maurits J. Meijers, Anja Neundorf, Dániel Oross, Aykut Öztürk, Rodolfo Sarsfield, Darin Self, Ben Stanley, Tsung-han TsaiAndrej Zaslove, Elizabeth J. Zechmeister

^*Corresponding author for this work

Politics

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Abstract

Much of what we know about public support for democracy is based on survey questions about “democracy,” a term that varies in meaning across countries and likely prompts uncritically supportive responses. This paper proposes a new approach to measuring support for democracy. We develop a battery of 17 survey questions that cover all eight components of liberal democracy as defined by the V-Dem project. We then ask respondents from 19 national samples to evaluate these rights and institutions. We find considerable heterogeneity across countries in how our items cohere, especially in less developed contexts. Yet, those items that are more weakly connected with general support for liberal democracy tend to reveal the influence of political events and actors, arguably indicating weaknesses in political cultures. We further identify a concise subset of seven items that provide a reliable and valid measure of support for liberal democracy across our different samples.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1171-1198
Number of pages	28
Journal	Comparative Political Studies
Volume	58
Issue number	6
Early online date	23 Jul 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140241259458
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 23 Jul 2024

Funding

RC and RS acknowledge financial support from the Department of Political Science and Center for Human Rights and Democracy at Georgia State University. CC acknowledges financial support from the Leverhulme Trust, via a Philip Leverhulme Prize, and from the ESRC via the NORFACE Joint Research Programme “Democratic Governance in a Turbulent Age,” which is cofunded by the European Commission through Horizon 2020 under grant agreement No 822166. LB and EZ acknowledge financial support from the LAPOP Lab and Vanderbilt University. KA acknowledges financial support from the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal and State Governments at Heidelberg University as part of the project “Experienced solidarity: values, motives and practices in caring communities and social volunteering (EXPSOLIDARITY).” EB acknowledges financial support from Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich. SG and DO acknowledge financial support from the Centre for Social Sciences Budapest and the “Democratic Innovations and Hungarian Parties” Postdoctoral Excellence Program (PD_131408), National Research and Development Fund of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office. AC acknowledges financial support from the Institute for Liberty and Responsibility at Reichman University. DH and DS acknowledge financial support from Brigham Young University. MM acknowledges financial support from the Dutch Science Council (NWO) via a Veni grant awarded to MM, “Credible or Capricious: The Reputational Cost of Party Policy Change,” grant number VI. Veni.191R.018. SD acknowledges financial support from the Norwegian Research Council, via a Young Researcher Talent grant awarded to SD, “When will citizens defend democracy?” (DefDem). BS acknowledges financial support from the Polish National Science Centre (NCN) via the NCN OPUS 20 project “Partisan bias or indifference? Actually-Existing Democratic Values and their Consequences in Poland” under grant agreement 2020/39/B/HS6/00853. PM acknowledges the financial support of the Horizon2020 project: “Next Steps in Securing the Sustainability of the European Social Survey (ESS-SUSTAIN-2).” RM acknowledges the financial support of the School of Government and Public Policy Departmental Research Fund at the University of Strathclyde. TT acknowledges the financial support of the National Science and Technology Council, R.O.C., grant MOST 110-2410-H-004-079-MY3. AN and AO acknowledge the financial support of a European Research Council Consolidator Grant to AN, “Democracy under Threat: How Education can Save it” (DEMED), Grant number 865305. YL acknowledges the financial support of David Binder Research.

Keywords

public opinion
support for democracy
democracy
survey research

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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Claassen-etal-CPS-2024-Conceptualizing-and-measuring-support-for-democracyFinal published version, 1.8 MBLicence: CC BY 4.0

Cite this

Claassen, C., Ackermann, K., Bertsou, E., Borba, L., Carlin, R. E., Cavari, A., Dahlum, S., Gherghina, S., Hawkins, D., Lelkes, Y., Magalhães, P. C., Mattes, R., Meijers, M. J., Neundorf, A., Oross, D., Öztürk, A., Sarsfield, R., Self, D., Stanley, B., ... Zechmeister, E. J. (2024). Conceptualizing and measuring support for democracy: a new approach. Comparative Political Studies, 58(6), 1171-1198. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140241259458

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abstract = "Much of what we know about public support for democracy is based on survey questions about “democracy,” a term that varies in meaning across countries and likely prompts uncritically supportive responses. This paper proposes a new approach to measuring support for democracy. We develop a battery of 17 survey questions that cover all eight components of liberal democracy as defined by the V-Dem project. We then ask respondents from 19 national samples to evaluate these rights and institutions. We find considerable heterogeneity across countries in how our items cohere, especially in less developed contexts. Yet, those items that are more weakly connected with general support for liberal democracy tend to reveal the influence of political events and actors, arguably indicating weaknesses in political cultures. We further identify a concise subset of seven items that provide a reliable and valid measure of support for liberal democracy across our different samples.",

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Claassen, C, Ackermann, K, Bertsou, E, Borba, L, Carlin, RE, Cavari, A, Dahlum, S, Gherghina, S, Hawkins, D, Lelkes, Y, Magalhães, PC, Mattes, R, Meijers, MJ, Neundorf, A, Oross, D, Öztürk, A, Sarsfield, R, Self, D, Stanley, B, Tsai, T, Zaslove, A & Zechmeister, EJ 2024, 'Conceptualizing and measuring support for democracy: a new approach', Comparative Political Studies, vol. 58, no. 6, pp. 1171-1198. https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140241259458

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AU - Claassen, Christopher

AU - Ackermann, Kathrin

AU - Bertsou, Eri

AU - Borba, Lucas

AU - Carlin, Ryan E.

AU - Cavari, Amnon

AU - Dahlum, Sirianne

AU - Gherghina, Sergiu

AU - Hawkins, Darren

AU - Lelkes, Yphtach

AU - Magalhães, Pedro C.

AU - Mattes, Robert

AU - Meijers, Maurits J.

AU - Neundorf, Anja

AU - Oross, Dániel

AU - Öztürk, Aykut

AU - Sarsfield, Rodolfo

AU - Self, Darin

AU - Stanley, Ben

AU - Tsai, Tsung-han

AU - Zaslove, Andrej

AU - Zechmeister, Elizabeth J.

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AB - Much of what we know about public support for democracy is based on survey questions about “democracy,” a term that varies in meaning across countries and likely prompts uncritically supportive responses. This paper proposes a new approach to measuring support for democracy. We develop a battery of 17 survey questions that cover all eight components of liberal democracy as defined by the V-Dem project. We then ask respondents from 19 national samples to evaluate these rights and institutions. We find considerable heterogeneity across countries in how our items cohere, especially in less developed contexts. Yet, those items that are more weakly connected with general support for liberal democracy tend to reveal the influence of political events and actors, arguably indicating weaknesses in political cultures. We further identify a concise subset of seven items that provide a reliable and valid measure of support for liberal democracy across our different samples.

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Conceptualizing and measuring support for democracy: a new approach

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

UN SDGs

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