Mass Attitude Toward Democracy in Different Types of Regime: Testing an Assumption of Democratic Qualities

Abstract

At first glance, the world has long appeared to embrace democracy, and democratization has been a decades-long global trend: World Values Survey (2005-2008) shows about 78% of the surveyed citizens across five continents said it was important to live in a country governed democratically, and the Economist’s Intelligence Unit estimates 80 countries around the world have now exhibited some form of democracy. Yet, there has been concern about the quality of democracy based on the assumption that, in fragile democracies, the mass public has yet established democratic preferences and habits (Diamond, 1999; Bratton, 2002; Wang, 2007). This paper tested the assumption that the mass public in more democratic countries exhibited stronger democratic attitudes than that in less democratic countries. The examination focused on public statement of support for democracy and actual engagement in democratic processes. 53 countries were examined using secondary data (2005-2008) made available by the Economist’s Intelligence Unit, Polity IV project, and World Values Survey.The empirical evidences provided a mixed picture of mass attitudes toward democracy across types of regime, partly supporting and partly dismissing the tested assumption. Countries in better state of democracy did not always have an all-around better record of public political participation. With regard to interest in politics, it was clear that the difference was not as assumed, as higher percentage of democratic countries (flawed or full) had an indifferent public than that of undemocratic countries (authoritarian, hybrid, or autocracy). However, with regard to political actions, the public in fully democratic countries were indeed more engaging in demonstration and, to a lesser extent, in petition than the public in other types of regime. Regarding public support for democracy, data showed that, across the continents and types of regime, people explicitly expressed strong support for democracy; yet public perception toward authoritarian government was somewhat mixed, with nearly half of the hybrid regimes or flawed democracies’ public showing preference for a strong leader that bypassed the parliament and disregarded elections. The implications of the findings for comparative studies of democracy were discussed.