German Legislators’ Conceptions of Democracy and Process Preferences: Results from a New Survey

Abstract

ABSTRACT Democracy’s resilience arguably depends on political elites’ loyalty to the political system. How do elected representatives understand democracy and their own role in it? We present results of a survey conducted among German legislators in state parliaments and the Bundestag in 2022. We start by mapping the scope and content of consensus and dissent where principles of democracy and their institutionalisation are concerned and go on to hypothesise that congruence between one’s own conceptions of democracy and established institutions and practices is generally higher among established and government parties’ representatives but also dependent on ideological inclinations. Our results are overall reassuring, showing a relatively low level of polarisation in attitudes to democracy, and have implications for the study of political elites, for diagnoses of political polarisation in Germany and for the possibility and feasibility of institutional reform.