Where Democrats Disagree: Citizens’ Normative Conceptions of Democracy
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717715398 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717715398
Political Studies
2017, Vol. 65(4) 786 –804
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321717715398
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Where Democrats Disagree:
Citizens’ Normative
Conceptions of Democracy
Claudia Landwehr and Nils D Steiner
Abstract
While support for the essential norms of liberal electoral democracy is high in almost all developed
democracies, there is arguably also a gap between democratic aspirations and democratic practice,
leading to dissatisfaction among citizens. We argue that citizens may hold very different normative
conceptions of democracy which are equally compatible with support for liberal democracy, but
lead to different expectations where institutional design and democratic practice are concerned.
Satisfaction with democracy may thus depend on congruence between such normative conceptions
and institutionally entrenched norms. Drawing on survey data from Germany with a comprehensive
item battery on attitudes towards democratic decision-making, we identify four distinct factors
leading to disagreements over democratic decision-making. We explore how these are related to
personality, styles of cognition and political attitudes, and show that different expectations arise
from them, such that regime support is affected by the normative conception(s) of democratic
decision-making individuals subscribe to.
Keywords
political support, process preferences, attitudes to democracy, citizens, Germany
Accepted: 29 March 2017
Introduction
Shrinking turnout rates, political disenchantment and the success of populist parties in
many European countries give rise to concerns about the state and future of democracy.
While support for the idea of liberal electoral democracy is still very high in established
democracies, there exists what Pippa Norris terms a ‘democratic deficit’ between demo-
cratic ideals and democratic practice (Norris, 2011). Citizens’ everyday experiences and
perceptions of politics often seem to be characterised by disappointments, resulting in a
lack of trust in professional politicians and the institutions of representative democracy.
Department of Political Science, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Mainz, Germany
Corresponding author:
Claudia Landwehr, Department of Political Science, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Jakob Welder
Weg 12, Mainz 55099, Germany.
Email: landwehr@politik.uni-mainz.de
715398PSX0010.1177/0032321717715398Political StudiesLandwehr and Steiner
research-article2017
Article
Landwehr and Steiner 787
The origins of this disappointment remain controversial in the literature: Norris has argued
that increasingly critical citizens demand more and more effective opportunities for politi-
cal participation (Norris, 1999). Dalton’s ‘new politics’-hypothesis points in a similar
direction: for a younger generation with post-materialist attitudes, representative democ-
racy may simply not be enough democracy (Dalton, 1999). Hibbing and Theiss-Morse
have countered these arguments with a diagnosis of ‘stealth democracy’, according to
which many citizens have a deep dislike of political conflict and, having no interest in
participation themselves, would prefer political decisions to be taken by unelected experts
and professional business people (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, 2002). More recently,
numerous authors have pointed out how socio-economically disadvantaged groups have
increasingly withdrawn from political participation, thus reducing incentives for politi-
cians to respond to their interests and preferences (e.g. Bartels, 2009; Schäfer, 2013).
According to this view, the ‘bottom third’ of society that is increasingly left behind is not
reached by offers to participate on the input side of democracy and is understandably frus-
trated with policy outputs that do anything but alleviate their exclusion. This group may be
particularly vulnerable to populist mobilisation, which, given the recent electoral success
of right-wing populists in many countries, may be the most significant contemporary con-
cern. Populist parties and politicians also appeal to many middle-class citizens, though,
and several researchers have identified a specific set of attitudes motivating support for
them (Akkerman et al., 2013; Spruyt et al., 2016).
However, these diagnoses are not mutually exclusive. Critical citizens may well exist
besides stealth democrats, populists and a bottom third of society that is excluded both
socio-economically and politically. If many citizens are dissatisfied with democracy’s
performance, this may be for entirely different reasons: Citizens are likely to expect dif-
ferent things from democracy and detect different shortcomings. In this article, we are
interested in this very sphere of reasonable disagreement between democrats, that is,
between people who in principle agree on the principles of polyarchy and the rule of law
– a sphere of disagreement that in our eyes remains underexplored in the existing
literature.
We thus assume that citizens even and particularly in pluralist and consolidated democ-
racies have differing normative conceptions of democracy from which different demo-
cratic aspirations follow. While there is apparently a strong consensus where a conceptual
core of liberal electoral democracy is concerned (Ferrin and Kriesi, 2016), a second layer
of more specific normative orientations towards democratic decision-making is clasped
around this core. This second layer of normative conceptions of democracy is more con-
troversial than the core and may differ between societal groups and individuals. It consti-
tutes a sphere of democratic disagreement, a sphere in which people who support the
fundamental norms of liberal electoral democracy have different normative ideas about
democracy’s input side. It is one of the aspects of collective life on which democrats
disagree.
To back up this claim, we conduct a series of analyses with data from a survey that was
fielded in the German GESIS Panel (GESIS, 2017) in 2015. Our questionnaire uses a
longish list of controversial statements about democracy with which good democrats may
just as well agree or disagree to differing extents. The motivation behind our question-
naire is to study citizens’ normative orientations towards democratic decision-making
procedures more comprehensively, in order to inductively identify latent factors of disa-
greement and study their determinants and consequences for political support. We discuss
our motivation against the background of existing research on citizens’ orientations
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