Assessing Citizen Responses to Democracy: A Review and Synthesis of Recent Public Opinion Research

A growing number of political scientists have recently claimed that democracy has emerged as a universal value, and that it is also becoming the universally preferred system of government. Is the whole world becoming democratic, as these proponents of global democratization claim? To test the validity of these claims, this study critically reviews the voluminous literature on citizen conceptions of democracy and identifies the limitations of previous public opinion research on democratization. In an attempt to overcome those limitations, it proposes a two-dimensional notion of informed democratic understanding, and thereby reanalyzes the World Values Surveys conducted in 2005-8. Results of the analysis reveal that two-thirds of global citizenries are either uninformed or misinformed about the fundamental characteristics of democracy and its alternatives. In every region except for the old-democratic West, moreover, the well-informed constitute minorities of its avowed supporters. On the basis of these findings, the study contends that for much of the world today, democracy represents little more than an appealing rhetorical political symbol voiced in regimes that still retain authoritarian practices. It also contends that contrary to increasingly popular theses of global democratization and neo-modernization, liberal democracy is not likely to stand at the “end of History.