Public Support For Democracy Research Articles

Public Support for Democracy in China

It is clear that public support for democracy is high in China. Public opinion surveys show that more than 90% of Chinese citizens believe that having a democracy is good. But the majority is not yet ready for a major effort towards democratization because they still see economic growth and social stability as more important than freedom of speech, political participation, and other democratic rights. However, more and more people are growing up with the belief that political rights and freedom supersede economic wellbeing or other materialist goals. In 15–20 years, Chinese society will be dominated by people with such beliefs. We can be cautiously optimistic about the prospects for democratic change in China.

Public support for democracy in hong kong

Hong Kong witnessed a large-scale public rally and extensive support for democracy in mid-2003. This article explains the support by means of variables extracted from cultural, instrumental and sociological approaches. Drawn from the cultural approach, ‘post-materialistic activism’ and low levels of ‘respect for authority’ are found to be most powerful in explaining mass support, among all explanatory variables. Since culture seldom changes overnight, popular support for democracy may be sustained in the short and medium term. The calculation of the economic consequences for democracy, a variable drawn from the instrumental approach, has no effect on mass support. Thus, any attempt to suppress popular demand for democracy by offering economic sweeteners alone may prove futile. The most important instrumental factor among the public is ‘their confidence in political parties’. Whether pan-democratic parties can elevate such confidence becomes pivotal to boosting and sustaining this support. The lack of relatively stronger support among the younger and more educated stratum of people in Hong Kong does not bode well for prospects of increased mass support in the future. Finally, the article offers a small footnote on the implications for the ‘Asian values’ debate.

Generic vs. Name-Brand: Regime Labels and the Meaning of Public Support for Democracy in Nicaragua

Generic vs. Name-Brand: Regime Labels and the Meaning of Public Support for Democracy in Nicaragua

How Solid is Mass Support for Democracy—And How Can We Measure It?

A decade has passed since the Third Wave of democratization brought an avalanche of new, relatively unstable democracies into being, raising the question, “How solid is support for democracy in these countries?” In the intervening years, public support for democracy has faded in some countries, many of which are democratic in name only. It is unclear how long even the pretense of electoral democracy will survive in the Soviet successor states, apart from the Baltics (Brzezinski 2001). The prospects for democracy in Islamic countries seem particularly poor, with some writers arguing that the basic values of Islamic publics may be incompatible with liberal democracy (Huntington 1993, 1996). This article examines this claim, using the 1999–2001 wave of the World Values Survey, which includes 10 Islamic countries, making it possible for the first time to compare the Islamic world with other major cultural zones. We find surprisingly widespread support for democracy among Islamic publics—at least by conventional measures.

Between Liberal Autocracy and Democracy: Democratic Legitimacy in Hong Kong

The partial democracy in Hong Kong is an experiment with limited suffrage in a liberal, self-governing society. This article examines the impact of system dissatisfaction and fundamental cultural values on democratic legitimacy, using logistic regression analyses of data drawn from an electoral survey in 2000. It is found that widespread public dissatisfaction with the economic downturn has not been generalized to the abstract, structural level of regime legitimacy. Equally widespread discontent with the political situation matters; but it has strengthened public support for democracy, rather than weakened it. Finally, democratic legitimacy is grounded in liberal, post-material and individualist-competitive values. In recognition of the plausible durability of these fundamental cultural norms and in view of the relative lack of support for non-democratic alternatives and strong support for partial electoral reform, we conclude that Hong Kong is very likely to remain on track toward a fuller democracy by incremental steps.

How People View Democracy: Between Stability and Crisis in Latin America

Abstract: Across Latin America, public support for democracy has been remarkably stable and consistently higher than satisfaction with the way that democracy works. Low institutional trust reflects even lower levels of interpersonal trust.