1 Crisis of Democracy and Democratic Conceptions
As a leading scholar of democracy has acknowledged: “democracy is in crisis” (Diamond 2019). In Western democracies, the rise of authoritarian populism (Norris and Inglehart 2018) poses critical challenges to the practices of liberal democracy (whose supremacy has been almost taken for granted since the end of World War II). These challenges have been further exacerbated by the declining popular confidence in democracy among citizens (especially younger cohorts) of Western democracies (Mounk 2018), which may be the harbinger of a deconsolidation of established democracies (Foa and Mounk 2016, 2017; Howe 2017).1 Beyond Western democracies, the long expected democratic transitions in authoritarian regimes and consolidation of new democracies (thanks to economic modernization, new information technologies, the intentional promotion of democracy advocates, etc.) (Inglehart 2018; Norris and Inglehart 2009; Boix 2011) have come to a halt or even been reversed, partly due to authoritarian or populist leaders’ calculated preemptive strikes against opposition mobilization, by soliciting and responding to their citizens’ needs more effectively (Tang 2016; Dickson 2016; Manion 2016), smart use of new information technologies (King et al. 2013, 2017), and strategic institutional engineering (Boix and Svolik 2013; Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009; Truex 2016).
Meanwhile, democracy still enjoys its supremacy in contemporary political discourse, with limited meaningful challenges from alternatives. In the United States, despite his provocative Twitter messages and threats to lock up political opponents, President Trump still had to negotiate with rather than dictate to members of the Democratic Party on various political issues. In Russia, President Putin has never been shy of using all necessary means (including but not limited to arresting his opponents) to secure his political control and power; but he still competes in presidential elections (albeit manipulated in his favor) to earn political legitimacy and did observe Russia’s presidential term limits by stepping aside in 2008 (then resuming
Understandings of Democracy. Jie Lu and Yun-Han Chu, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197570401.003.0001
the presidency in 2012).2 In Philippines, President Duterte de facto legalized the killing of, and encouraged Filipinos to kill, drug dealers and addicts without observing due process rights when he assumed the presidency, yet he also publicly ordered the military to shoot him if he ever tried to stay on for a second term. Similarly, few of today’s authoritarian leaders publicly denounce democracy; instead, they are more inclined to present their regimes as democracies (with varying adjectives attached of course). Furthermore, ordinary people appreciate democracy, widely and deeply: several rounds of large-scale public opinion surveys have established its popularity, even in societies with limited practice of democracy (Cho 2015; Dalton et al. 2007; Shin 2017). Democracy is still the “only game” in contemporary political discourse.
Given the popularity and supremacy of democracy in contemporary political discourse, the hotly debated and discussed crisis of democracy is puzzling. Basically, if most people love democracy and politicians (whether they like it or not) have to live with democracy, how can democracy be in trouble? More specifically, if people love democracy, should they not despise authoritarian leaders and regimes, or even join the advocates of democracy to rebel against authoritarian leaders and regimes? Should not they vote against populist leaders who have blatantly violated democratic institutions, procedures, or norms?
To comprehensively address these questions, we need to examine both supply-side (i.e., evolving political practices and institutional engineering led by political elites) and demand-side (i.e., transformative opinions and behaviors among the masses) dynamics. Intellectual exercises on supply-side dynamics have received a lot of attention from students of democratization and democracy-promoting institutions. Meanwhile, in practical terms, advice and assistance have been offered to emerging democracies in all areas including constitutional design, choices of electoral systems, best practice for enhancing electoral integrity, rule of law, transparency, the protection of minorities’ rights, and capacity building in legislative and judicial branches (Diamond and Morlino 2005; Carothers 2015).3 In contrast, demand-side dynamics have been given scanty attention so far. Therefore, in this book, we focus on some key micro-dynamics that have driven related mass attitudes and behaviors, all of which are centered on how people understand democracy in different ways.4
More specifically, we argue that (1) people hold distinct understandings of democracy; (2) popular conceptions of democracy are significantly shaped
by socioeconomic and political contexts; (3) such varying conceptions generate different baselines for people to assess democratic practices and to establish their views of democracy; and (4) such distinct conceptions also drive political participation in different ways. Overall, popular understandings of democracy have critically shaped how citizens respond to authoritarian or populist practices in contemporary politics. This book tries to theorize and demonstrate that, as a critical but under-appreciated component of demandside dynamics, varying conceptions of democracy offer significant explanatory power for understanding why democracy is in trouble in today’s world, even when most people profess to love democracy.
1.1 The value of democratic conceptions for understanding the crisis of democracy
There is no lack of research on the crisis of democracy. Nevertheless, there is a noticeable division among the scholars regarding their preferred explanatory variables (depending on their subjects of interest). For those who are interested in possible deconsolidation in democracies (e.g., the rise of populism and extreme parties, increasing political polarization, growing pessimistic views of democracy, etc.), certain macro socioeconomic and political changes over recent decades (e.g., increasing inequality, spread of social media and new information technologies, economic stagnation, increasing salience of identity politics) (Mounk 2018), the cultural backlash against the progressive values that have developed in industrial democracies (a backlash which has been further exacerbated by declining existential security) (Inglehart 2018; Norris and Inglehart 2018; Inglehart and Norris 2017), as well as the compelling inducements and constraints emanating from the international environment (sometimes in a very dramatic way, like a seismic rearrangement of power in the geopolitical arena) (Huntington 1991; Whitehead 2001; Kagan 2015), are the variables of interest.
For those who are interested in the stagnation or recession in democratic transitions in authoritarian regimes, as well as such regimes’ resilience against the pressure for democratic changes, authoritarian leaders’ strategic institutional engineering (for power-sharing, coopting dissidents, training and disciplining rank and file members, collecting information, regulating and censoring media, etc.) is the focus for analysis (Svolik 2012; Kim and Gandhi 2010; Truex 2016; Koss 2018; Pepinsky 2013; Gandhi and Lust-Okar
2009). Clearly, research on these subjects has greatly improved our understanding of the crisis of democracy in today’s world. But we still are left wondering whether there is something shared in common among societies with distinct political regimes that might have contributed to the crisis of democracy. Put another way, can we identify some commonly shared feature or factor that might enable us to establish a coherent framework to explain the crisis of democracy in distinct political settings?
To effectively understand the crisis of democracy, it is important to acknowledge two empirically established facts. First, despite its challenges and problems, democracy still enjoys supremacy in contemporary political discourse. Few politicians are willing to publicly denounce democracy, and most people express a love for democracy (as least, according to existing public opinion surveys) (Dalton et al. 2007; Shin 2017). Second, people hold various expectations of democracy. Some people see democracy as a way of securing their dignity as a human being by ensuring their basic rights and liberty; while others see democracy as a way of facilitating economic prosperity, improving living standards, and delivering quality governance (Shin and Kim 2018; Bratton and Mattes 2001; Lu 2013; Lu and Shi 2015). Basically, democracy is widely appreciated; but people appreciate the type of democracy tailored to their respective personal preferences. This generates highly significant psychological, cognitive, and behavioral dynamics for understanding the prospects for democracy in today’s world.
On the one hand, people embracing distinct conceptions of democracy may assess their political regime’s performance and democratic nature, respond to political activists’ and politicians’ mobilization, and engage in various participatory activities in different ways. On the other hand, politicians and political activists may also have strong incentives to shape how people understand democracy and present their way or proposed way of governing as genuinely democratic, given their power in setting the agenda for political discussion, priming specific emotional responses, and framing political discourse. These mass- and elite-dynamics have been carefully documented in both democracies (Carey et al. 2019) and authoritarian regimes (Lu and Shi 2015; Lu et al. 2014).
Consequently, such dynamics can explain why some citizens of democracies have been led astray by populist politicians, ignored these politicians’ blatant violations of core democratic institutions, procedures, and norms, and even actively engaged in radical political activities exacerbating political polarization and gridlock. At the same time, such dynamics can also explain
why some citizens of authoritarian societies have been incapable of seeing through the democratic disguise of authoritarian leaders, have willingly endorsed the rule of such leaders as some form of democracy (as long as they can deliver quality governance), and have tended to remain silent when democracy advocates mobilize against the authoritarian regime. In sum, by focusing on how people conceptualize democracy in different ways, as well as such varying understandings’ attitudinal and behavioral consequences, we can establish a coherent framework (i.e., covering societies with distinct political settings) to shed light on the micro-foundations of democracy’s contemporary crisis.5
Hence, we strongly believe that knowing how ordinary people define democracy and why they conceptualize democracy in specific ways provides a critical lens through which we can examine and answer many critical questions raised in the aforementioned debates and discussions on the prospects for democracy in today’s world. For instance, why do we observe declining enthusiasm for democracy in the trilateral democracies (especially among their younger citizens), as documented by recent surveys (Foa and Mounk 2017, 2016; Inglehart 2016)? Despite the repeatedly demonstrated relationship between economic growth and democracy (Przeworski et al. 2000; Barro 1999), as well as the cogent arguments from different versions of modernization theory (Welzel 2013; Inglehart and Welzel 2005; Eisenstadt 1966; Tipps 1973), why have the expected transitions to democracy in some authoritarian societies (including China and Vietnam as prominent cases) not been achieved, even after decades of continuous economic growth? Furthermore, if we really want to address some of the major deficiencies and problems in existing democratic institutions, thus boosting popular enthusiasm for democracy and improving its prospects, what should be our priorities?
Compared to the aforementioned societal-level socioeconomic, institutional, and cultural features, democratic conceptions (as an individual feature) have many more specific and concrete implications for mass opinions and behaviors, thus enabling us to more effectively uncover and demonstrate the micro-foundations of democracy’s contemporary crisis. Compared to certain deep-rooted values (e.g., self-expressive or emancipative values) internalized by individuals through long-term socialization and consolidated via generational replacement, popular conceptions of democracy not only offer more satisfying middle-range explanations (with clearly specified causal mechanisms) for related political attitudes and behaviors but
also provide greater opportunities to examine the political dimension of democracy’s contemporary crisis. For example, what is the role of strategic political competition in shaping popular understandings of democracy (which, in turn, affect how people view their regime’s political practices in distinct ways and push for political changes in their preferred but different directions).
1.2 Why do popular understandings of democracy matter?
It is nothing new to argue that people hold different views on many critical things, including democracy. For students of political science, this lack of consensus is no accident, since they cannot even agree among themselves (i.e., the so-called experts on political issues) on what democracy means (Schmitter and Karl 1991) or on the effective measures of democracy for empirical analysis (Treier and Jackman 2008). However, the belief in the superiority of democracy as a political regime (as least, in comparison to all other regimes that have been tried in history, as Winston Churchill famously argued) in promoting people’s collective welfare and ensuring their dignity via institutionalized protection of rights and liberty has been widespread since the end of World War II, despite some recent scholarly reflections and debates on these issues (Fukuyama 2014, 2016).6 Furthermore, thanks to the dominance of the liberal democracy discourse that has been successfully established since its Third Wave (Huntington 1991), “democracy” has become the only discursive game in town, if not the only political one (Dalton et al. 2007; Shin 2017).
As a consequence, most people associate “democracy” with many desirable things, although many may just throw up their hands when probed for its meaning (Cho 2014, 2015). Even those who can attach substantive meanings to the D-word do not necessarily share a common understanding of the term. Likewise, most politicians rarely denounce democracy in public and have tried to present their behaviors, policymaking, and even power maneuvers as democratic, even though their blatant and outrageous violations of certain fundamental principles of democracy have been documented by journalists and scholars.7 In particular, for many authoritarian leaders, democracy is a necessary and convenient political fig leaf that can be adapted for and tailored to their political rule and survival. Moreover, such suitably tailored
discourses on democracy have been systematically cultivated and promoted, especially in non-democracies (Lu and Shi 2015; Lu et al. 2014; Kirsch and Welzel 2019; Kruse et al. 2019). It should not be difficult for students of political science to see through politicians’ manipulation of discourses on democracy and related propaganda. However, it would be a mistake to downplay the significance of such manipulation and propaganda or simply brush them aside as cynical political maneuvers.
Existing scholarship on the influence of elite discourse on public opinion (Zaller 1992; Druckman 2004; Druckman et al. 2013) strongly suggests that political leaders can collect concrete benefits by engaging in such discourse manipulation and propaganda (Geddes and Zaller 1989; Stockmann 2013; Lu et al. 2014), in particular, by shaping how their people understand democracy (besides using democracy as a garb for their power maneuvers). Therefore, the crux of our argument is that popular understandings of democracy provide the benchmark against which people assess their existing political regimes and evaluate possible alternatives, by shaping their expectations on what a “good” regime should look like. Such understandings and related assessments may further shape how people participate in politics. All these have significant implications for political dynamics in societies with different political regimes and varying experiences of democratic politics.
In established democracies, as Crow (2010) argues, people are inclined to assign different weights to various aspects of democracy. For instance, US youth have differing views on whether individual rights or equality should be emphasized more as defining features of democracy (Flanagan et al. 2005). The differences among European adults in their conceptions of democracy are no smaller, with some highlighting the significance of social justice and others prioritizing liberty and free elections (Ferrin and Kriesi 2016).8 Likewise, in Latin American and African democracies, people differ in their democratic conceptions regarding whether more weight should be placed on the protection of political rights or on sound socioeconomic performance (Canache 2012; Mattes and Bratton 2007; Gillman 2018; Baviskar and Malone 2004; Camp 2001).
Theoretically, for citizens of established democracies who prioritize quality governance (including but not limited to clean and efficient politics as well as effective social welfare systems that contain and even rebalance escalating inequality) as defining features of democracy, their evaluations of democratic governments with lackluster performance in these regards are unlikely to be flattering. The resulting unfavorable views of democratic governments and
political authorities, in turn, could erode these citizens’ enthusiasm for democracy. Moreover, a sustained fermentation of such unfavorable views, if not effectively addressed and rectified in a timely manner, may further lead to widespread apathy toward democracy. This could be part of the reason why recent survey data show an alarming crisis in popular support for democracy in many established democracies (Foa and Mounk 2016, 2017). It may also explain why students of democracy have been calling for more effort on ensuring good governance in democracies to confront the challenges posed by declining popular support for democracy (Diamond and Plattner 2015; Fukuyama 2016; Rotberg 2014). Furthermore, as such apathy grows, people in democracies might become less sensitive to politicians’ abuse of power, less able to act against their violations of fundamental democratic principles, and more attracted to their populist appeals. These factors favor the rise of populist authoritarian leaders in democracies (Moffitt 2016; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2012; Norris and Inglehart 2018), clearly damage the health of democracy, and significantly contribute to the deconsolidation or even death of democracy (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018).
In authoritarian societies or new democracies, the political implications of varying popular understandings of democracy are at least as serious as, if not more serious than, those in established democracies given the high stakes associated with potential regime change and institutional rearrangement (Lu and Shi 2015; Lu et al. 2014). Existing studies on democratization and regime change generally assume that popular demand for democracy exclusively follows the institutional prescriptions (i.e., highlighting competitive and fair elections, institutionalized protection of liberty and rights, division of power, checks and balances, the rule of law secured by independent judiciary, etc.) that are widely shared and promoted by the advocates of democracy in these societies. Therefore, whenever democracy movements appear, average citizens are expected to naturally and effectively align their demands with those of democracy advocates and, thus, to collectively push to replace non-democratic regimes with democratic ones.
However, in today’s world, almost all authoritarian leaders have tried to present their political practice as some form of democracy. These leaders are also keen on using the mass media and education system to indoctrinate their citizens with such manipulated discourses on democracy that work to their advantage (Reuter and Szakonyi 2015; Stockmann 2013; Kirsch and Welzel 2019; Kruse et al. 2019). For citizens of authoritarian societies or new democracies who prioritize effective governance (including but not limited
to sustained social stability, reliable access to basic needs, steady economic growth, etc.) as a defining characteristic of democracy, a competent and efficient authoritarian government may not necessarily be less democratic than a dysfunctional democratic one (e.g., entrapped in partisan gridlock, paralyzed by ethnic conflicts, or crippled by corrupt and inefficient bureaucrats). Thus, in authoritarian societies, democracy advocates’ call to overthrow the regime and replace it with a genuine democracy might fall on deaf ears, especially when the regime can rule effectively and govern competently.9 The prevalence of such understandings in new democracies also creates a favorable environment for shrewd and ambitious politicians, who might take advantage of their citizens’ growing dissatisfaction with newly elected governments, offer them attractive promises and short-term benefits, and eventually engineer possible backsliding to authoritarianism to fulfill their desire for unchecked power.10
Overall, it should be fair to argue that examining the origins, dynamics, and consequences of popular conceptions of democracy offers critical information for understanding public opinion and political behavior in both democracies and authoritarian regimes. Furthermore, such nuanced microlevel dynamics can also help us understand significant political changes in the contemporary world by providing an often ignored but critical piece to the puzzle. The main point is that, without effectively integrating popular understandings of democracy into theory building, it is very difficult to provide solid and meaningful micro-foundations for explaining the aforementioned macro-political phenomena, such as declining support for democracy and rising populism in democracies, as well as the existence of widespread support for democracy but without sufficient collective mobilization for political changes in autocracies.
1.3 Critical but missing dynamics
We further argue that the salient trade-offs between democratic principles and instrumental gains (both of which are desirable to most people in any society) are central to the theorization, operationalization, and measurement of popular conceptions of democracy.11 Unfortunately, despite the widely acknowledged value of incorporating popular understandings of democracy, until now, pertinent scholarship has not sufficiently theorized the salience of popular willingness to trade off democratic principles for instrumental gains
and has not effectively developed appropriate empirical instruments to capture these critical dynamics.12
Existing scholarship on democratic transition and consolidation has carefully documented the widespread anxiety over such trade-offs among the masses (Pop-Eleches and Tucker 2014, 2017; Houle 2009; Howe 2017) and the elites’ strategic weighing of such trade-offs in their political maneuvers (Acemoglu and Robinson 2006; Boix 2003). Even in established democracies, such trade-offs might be highlighted and even mobilized to the center of partisan politics under favorable contexts. As Wolf (2017, 2019) has vividly demonstrated in his widely-read Financial Times reports, the 2008–2009 global financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession have created exactly the context that enhances the salience of such trade-offs.
Given the worsening fiscal imbalance and threatened viability of entitlement programs in advanced industrial democracies, the economic insecurity and associated anxiety of the middle and working class have been aggravated. These mature democracies have also witnessed exacerbated distributive conflicts between the winners and losers of economic globalization, as well as inflamed popular resentment regarding their glaring income and wealth inequality. Altogether, these have contributed to the rise of the radical anti-globalization movement of the far left and the ultra-nationalistic populist movement of the far right in North America and Europe (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2012; Webb 2013; Moffitt 2016; Bonikowski and Gidron 2016). What has further surprised most students of democracy is how citizens in these democracies have responded to populist politicians’ blatant violations of fundamental democratic principles. Rather than punishing these populist politicians with their ballots, electorates in many cases have even rewarded them at the ballot box. These are glaring reminders of the threats to key democratic principles and institutions. In other words, people living under different regime types (including autocracies, new democracies, and established democracies) do recognize and evaluate such potential trade-offs. And, when necessary, they do make meaningful and consequential choices between key democratic principles/institutions and something else (depending on how they conceptualized democracy).
For us, the contrast between the following two conceptions of democracy is critical and central. The first understanding emphasizes the instrumental values of democracy in delivering socioeconomic and political goods. Thus, democracy is primarily conceptualized as a way of governance and is expected to be competent in satisfying its people’s demands via effective public
policies. The second understanding of democracy prioritizes the intrinsic values of democracy in ensuring a decent way of life for everyone. Therefore, democracy is mainly conceptualized as a way of life and is expected to realize the principle of popular sovereignty and ensuring its people’s dignity, as well as their inalienable rights and liberty, via established institutions and procedures. Overall, the contrast between the two conceptions of democracy hinges upon the willingness to trade off democratic principles for instrumental gains.13
Theoretically, the prevalence of such willingness in an authoritarian society substantially raises the bar for its transition to democracy. Such barriers can be further exacerbated when the authoritarian regime is competent in satisfying their citizens’ material needs, effective in driving liberal democratic ideas out of their mass media and education system (including repressing advocates of such ideas), and skillful in shaping their people’s hearts and minds via indoctrination and propaganda. Similarly, in a democracy, the prevalence of such willingness also raises popular expectations and demands for elected leaders to deliver short-term material benefits, creates space for various populist sentiments and extreme parties, and generates leeway for ambitious politicians to ignore or violate key democratic principles in the name of satisfying popular needs. All these pose significant challenges to the consolidation and health of democracy. Conversely, when citizens are less willing to trade off key democratic principles for instrumental gains, political mobilization for democratic transition in authoritarian societies can be greatly eased by targeting the regimes’ under-provision or lack of democratic institutions and procedures, thus orienting popular dissatisfaction and collective efforts against the Achilles heel of authoritarian regimes. Similarly, by controlling and inhibiting such willingness, democracies can improve their consolidation and resilience by aligning regime support with people’s identification with key democratic principles, thus making popular support for democracy more diffuse (Easton 1965, 1975) and less susceptible to short-term vicissitudes in governance.
It is important to emphasize that we do not argue that there are some inherent and unavoidable trade-offs between key democratic principles/ procedures and good governance. A positive correlation between democratic institutions and procedures, on the one hand, and good governance, on another hand, has been theoretically defended and empirically established in the literature (Przeworski et al. 2000; Treisman 2000; Olken 2010; Deacon 2009). What we have tried to argue is that, when socioeconomic and political
conditions highlight the tensions between the intrinsic and instrumental aspects of democracy, people’s willingness to trade off the former for the latter has critical implications for democracy. The continuing ramifications of the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, as well as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, have created exactly such a context around the world.
Besides its theoretical and academic significance for pertinent comparative research, this contrast is also of high salience in today’s world, given the growing tensions between the world’s two largest economies, China and the United States. Both countries, at least according to their respective official discourse, are “great democracies.”14 Nevertheless, these two countries boast distinct political regimes and rely on different models of governance and growth and equally actively engage in global campaigns to, explicitly or implicitly, defend and promote their respective ways of governance.
Politically, since the Cold War (1947–1991), the United States has been closely associated with the model of liberal democracy in global political discourse, although there are growing concerns over the deteriorating quality of US liberal democracy over the past decades (Fukuyama 2006; Gilens 2005; Mounk 2018; Diamond 2019), especially in the Trump era (Inglehart and Norris 2017). Economically, the United States has pioneered and been leading the world’s technological innovations since the 1970s, especially in information technology, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. The 2019 Global Technology Innovation Report still identifies it as the most promising market for innovation and technology breakthroughs, endorsed by 23% of those surveyed.15 The US economy is recovering from the lingering impact of the 2008–2009 global financial crisis triggered by its subprime mortgage market crisis. Its GDP growth rate has bounced back from negative growth of about 2.5% in 2009 to positive growth of about 2.3% in 2019, performing much better than most other established democracies. Overall, the defining features of US democracy are embodied within its constitution, which promotes checks and balances, division of power, rule of law, and institutionalized protection of people’s inalienable rights and liberty. This model has had a long and lasting impact on many people’s understandings of democracy. It has also guided the designs of constitutions in many new democracies. Meanwhile, it is undeniable that US society, like that of most advanced industrial democracies, is challenged by increasing inequality, polarization, and partisan gridlock as well as shrinking social mobility. The unexpected success of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election and the rising anti-establishment and populist sentiment among the US public are
indubitable indicators of such problems (Mounk 2018; Norris and Inglehart 2018). It should be reasonable to argue that, despite its obvious advantages, US democracy also shows major deficiencies.
China’s market-oriented reforms and state-led industrialization since the late 1970s have not only prevented the collapse of its economy but also transformed it into “the world’s factory,” contributing to around 30% of global economic growth in 2018. Meanwhile, China also has moved up the global value chain by restructuring its economy via government-sponsored technological innovations. The same report on global technology innovation in 2019 ranks China as the second most promising market for innovation and technology breakthroughs, endorsed by 17% of those surveyed and outperforming the UK (endorsed by 9% and ranked third), Japan (ranked fourth), and India and Singapore (tied for fifth). Although the Chinese economy similarly suffered from the 2008–2009 global financial crisis and was further burdened by various domestic issues, it still managed to secure impressive growth rates of 6.6% and 9.4% in 2008 and 2009 respectively, while accommodating the “new normal” with corresponding adjustments in its economy. Furthermore, according to recent statistics from the International Labor Organization,16 China has managed to ensure a real salary growth faster than that of all G20 countries and most other economies in the world following the 2008–2009 global financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession. In other words, the Chinese way of promoting economic growth has done a much better job in riding the tide lifting all boats. As Fukuyama publicly claimed at the beginning of 2016: “an historic contest is underway, largely hidden from public view, over competing Chinese and Western strategies to promote economic growth. The outcome of this struggle will determine the fate of much of Eurasia in the decades to come.”17
It is no wonder that many developing and even developed countries are stunned by China’s outstanding performance in achieving economic growth, despite increasing concerns over its sustainability and wild speculations about its forthcoming economic crisis or even collapse. Politically, Communism mixed with some Confucian components remains the official ideology endorsed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Since the late 1970s, the CCP has moved away from its earlier totalitarian model of governance under Mao (Naughton 2007; Fewsmith 2013), promoted some institutionalization in its selection and management of cadres and leaders (Li 2012; Nathan 2003), and expanded its domestic channels for participation (Wang 2006, 2008; Tsai 2015; Chen 2012; Tang 2016). Nevertheless, China still is today’s largest one-party
regime, with sophisticated and effective control over its society and people (Shirk 2007; Shambaugh 2008; Dickson 2016) and limited meaningful competition in its domestic politics (Shambaugh 2016). Meanwhile, the CCP is fully aware of the dominance of democracy in contemporary political discourse and therefore seeks to present itself as a “genuine democracy,” though of course with Chinese characteristics (or socialist democracy), to both domestic and international audiences (Lu et al. 2014; Lu and Shi 2015; Shi and Lu 2010; Hu 2020). This new “democracy cocktail” mixing economic growth, social stability, and political monopoly by a disciplined and competent ruling party has become increasingly attractive for many developing societies, especially those trapped in poverty and violence and lacking normal political life. Therefore, for some students of democracy, the China model has posed a serious and meaningful challenge to the prospects for liberal democracy in today’s world (Diamond and Plattner 2015; Plattner 2017; Öniş 2017; Diamond 2019).
The book’s main goal is to understand how popular conceptions of democracy may affect the prospects for democracy in the twenty-first century. Our comprehensive review of the pertinent literature, careful observation of major socioeconomic and political changes in today’s world, the growing salience of the rivalry between China and the United States in promoting their respective ways of governance, and the widely shared acknowledgment of democracy as the most attractive and politically correct veneer for politicians to present their regimes all suggest the necessity of incorporating popular understandings of democracy in our analysis of the prospects of democracy. Furthermore, popular willingness to trade off democratic principles for instrumental gains should be central to the theorization, operationalization, and measurement of democratic conceptions.
1.4 Research design and data
To effectively address our research questions, we need two sources of data for empirical analysis. First, we need detailed information about how people conceptualize democracy, as well as associated demographic, sociopsychological, cognitive, behavioral, and other attitudinal features. These will enable us to examine individual-level cognitive, psychological, attitudinal, and behavioral dynamics centered around popular understandings of democracy. Second, we need detailed information about the socioeconomic, political, and cultural contexts in which people are embedded. These will enable us to
examine some societal-level macro-mechanisms, as well as possible macromicro interactions, that might shape and moderate the aforementioned individual-level dynamics centered around democratic conceptions. For the first, sampling surveys provide the more effective tools for data collection. For the second, international organizations like the World Bank, IMF, and Freedom House, as well as various academic sources, have complied relevant datasets. Methodologically, we mostly rely on mixed-effect models (Gelman and Hill 2007; Luke 2004; Snijders and Bosker 2012) to integrate these two sources of data for effective statistical analysis and efficient estimation.
Despite rapid growth, there are still only a limited number of large-scale comparative studies (i.e., covering multiple regions with varying political and cultural traditions) on popular understandings of democracy, primarily due to the challenges and difficulties in gathering appropriate data.18 The World Values Survey (WVS) and regional barometer survey projects (e.g., Latinobarómetro, Afrobarometer, Asian Barometer, etc.) provide the key empirical data for existing large-scale comparative studies. In one of the earliest comparative analyses of different conceptions of democracy, Dalton et al. (2007) examine popular responses from forty-nine societies, with survey data collected from various sources during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Cho (2015) extends this line of research using the 2005–2008 WVS data from fifty societies for analysis. The most recent scholarship on “authoritarian notions of democracy” by Kirsch and Welzel (2019) relies on 2010–2014 WVS data from sixty societies for analysis; while Zagrebina (2020) broadens the geographical coverage of her examination of popular preferences over visible-vs.-invisible attributes of democracy by combining 2005–2014 WVS data from seventy-five societies. Table 1.1 provides detailed information on the geographical coverage of these studies.
Different from the aforementioned comparative research on popular understandings of democracy, this book examines the 2010–2013 Global Barometer Surveys (GBS II) data from seventy-one societies. GBS II offers the only large-scale comparative survey data with the appropriate instruments that capture the critical trade-off dynamics in how people conceptualize democracy, and also enables us to extend this line of research with an extensive, but more focused geographical coverage.19
The GBS is a collaborative research project consisting of six regional barometers. It is the first comprehensive effort to measure, at a mass level, the current social, political, and economic climate around the world. It provides an independent, non-partisan, scientific, and multidisciplinary view of
