What Kind of Democracy Do We All Support

Original Article
Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 0(0) 1–31
What Kind of Democracy © The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/00104140231152784
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Partisan Interest Impacts
a Citizen’s
Conceptualization of
Democracy
James D. Bryan1 
Abstract
Despite waves of democratic backsliding over the last decade, most global
citizens still claim to support democracy. On the other hand, many citizens
become more supportive of specific anti-democratic actions when their
preferred political side can benefit. How, then, do citizens justify their
consistent “explicit support for democracy” with their more malleable
support for the implementation of liberal democracy? This paper uses cross-
national survey data from 74 countries and two methods—a standard cross-
sectional analysis and a within-country variation design—to show that a
citizen’s conceptualization of democracy, or what democracy means to them,
is subject to partisan-motivated reasoning. In other words, citizens are more
likely to conceptualize democracy in illiberal terms, like emphasizing the need
for obeying authority, when their preferred political party is in power. The
findings suggest one’s conception of democracy can be a fluid attitude that
citizens mold to match their partisan self-interest.
1
American University, Washington, DC, USA
Corresponding Author:
James D. Bryan, School of International Service, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave
NW, Washington, DC 20016-8007, USA.
Email: jb6508b@student.american.edu
2 Comparative Political Studies 0(0)
Keywords
support for democracy, conceptualization of democracy, democratic
backsliding, polarization, partisanship
Introduction
On the night of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Viktor Orbán, the right-wing
illiberal leader of Hungary, released a message on Facebook saying: “de-
mocracy is still alive.” The irony is clear, as Orbán has slowly dismantled
democracy in Hungary, while Trump challenged longstanding norms in the
United States (Lührmann et al., 2020). The phenomenon of elected leaders
claiming to support democracy while simultaneously attacking the very
democratic institutions that brought them to power has characterized the
global “third wave of autocratization” (Lührmann & Lindberg, 2019).
Scholars have also observed a similar divide between explicitly claiming to
support democracy and support for individual tenets of liberal democracy in
public opinion surveys. The literature examining attitudes among the mass
public, however, has typically either analyzed changes to these two concepts
together or not investigated how and why they can change differently. From
the Orbán quote above, however, it appears that the illiberal leader has a
different definition of “democracy” than political scientists (see Coppedge
et al., 2011) or his partisan opponents. How, then, does partisan self-interest
differentially impact whether citizens explicitly claim to support democracy
versus their support for potential anti-democratic actions? Is this difference
explained by a partisan-motivated change in their understanding of what
democracy means?
The literature surrounding support for democracy is broad and robust.
Despite being a somewhat vague concept, the literature typically oper-
ationalizes support for democracy using survey questions that ask: whether
respondents believe democracy is appropriate and desirable; to compare
democracy to an undemocratic alternative; or to evaluate undemocratic ac-
tions or forms of government (Claassen, 2020, p. 122). Responses to these
questions have been shown to predict the prospects for democracy (Claassen,
2020; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Qi & Shin, 2011), impact individual voter
behavior (Booth & Seligson, 2009; Gunther et al., 2007), and other non-voting
forms of political participation (Bakule, 2021). These survey questions,
however, often measure different constructs and many citizens appear to hold
contradictory views (Ariely & Davidov, 2011; Schedler & Sarsfield, 2007).
Despite this finding and the knowledge that these attitudes are consequential,
the literature has not thoroughly investigated how certain events can have a
differential impact on citizens’ explicit support for democracy versus their
preference for specific actions that are antithetical to liberal democracy.
Bryan 3
In this article, I argue that citizens’ partisan self-interest can drive different
changes in their explicit support for democracy versus their support for
specific anti-democratic actions and offer an explanation for how citizens
justify these changes. Using two different methods to analyze data from the
sixth and seventh waves of the World Values Survey (WVS) and the fifth wave
of the European Values Study (EVS), I show that supporters of the regime in
power are more favorable toward specific actions that violate tenets of liberal
democracy, but do not profess less “explicit support for democracy.” To satisfy
their understanding that democracy has normative value while simultaneously
supporting specific anti-democratic actions, I theorize and show that partisans
in power are more likely to conceptualize democracy in illiberal terms—like
emphasizing the need for authority and deemphasizing the importance of civil
rights. In this sense, given the broad nature of democracy as a concept, the data
show that citizens are free to take an á la carte approach to constructing an
understanding of democracy that fits their partisan self-interest.
The results offer a better understanding of how citizens’ support for de-
mocracy can be responsive to the changing political context. Specifically, it
demonstrates how the social desirability behind the term “democracy”
(Inglehart, 2003) means that answers to survey questions that directly ask
about the desirability of democracy are less subject to partisan self-interest. On
the other hand, it is clear that some aspects of “support for democracy,”
notably those that deal with the power and rules of government, are subject to
change based on the appeal of partisan gain. Lastly, the data also shows the
meaning of democracy for individual citizens is also subject to partisan self-
interest—creating a clear narrative that citizens who support the regime can
claim to explicitly support democracy, while simultaneously supporting in-
dividual anti-democratic actions because those actions fit within their molded
understanding of what democracy means.
The structure of the article is as follows. It will begin by briefly reviewing the
existing literature that explains the various sub-components of support for de-
mocracy and what impacts them. Second, I will then present a theoretical ar-
gument that articulates how the three concepts are differently subject to partisan-
motivated reasoning. Third, the article will introduce the survey data, describe the
methods, and discuss the operationalization of the variables. Fourth, it will present
and discuss the results from the two studies. Finally, it will conclude with a
discussion of the limitations of the study and the implications of the findings.
Supporting What Kind of Democracy?

Empirical studies consistently find that most citizens around the world express
support for a democratic political system and democratic values, even in
authoritarian regimes (Inglehart, 2003; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Norris,
1999; Voeten, 2016). Simply expressing support for democracy when asked,
however, does not necessarily mean that citizens won’t support specific
actions that erode aspects of liberal democracy. In fact, many citizens might
support democracy in the abstract but reject core principals of liberal de-
mocracy, which Schedler and Sarsfield (2007) refer to as “democrats with
adjectives.” Therefore, it’s best to separate one’s “explicit support for de-
mocracy,” which is operationalized by survey questions that directly ask about
democracy, versus a respondent’s support for specific anti-democratic actions
or potential alternatives to democratic governance. This latter concept is often
measured by questions that query respondents about support for aspects of
liberal democracy or specific autocratic alternatives to democracy, but im-
portantly do not use the word “democracy” in the question (Ariely & Davidov,
2011; Magalhães, 2014).
Despite the known differences in the two concepts, much of the literature
that analyzes the effect of partisanship on support for democracy typically
focus on specific anti-democratic actions. For example, numerous studies
show that for many Americans, partisanship can take precedence over a
commitment to democratic values (Albertus & Grossman, 2021; Berliner,
2022; Carey et al., 2020; Graham & Svolik, 2020). This matches similar
findings from Latin America (Carlin & Singer, 2011; Singer, 2018) and Africa
(Moehler, 2009) that show that approval of the current regime can lower
support for vertical and horizontal accountability measures. Additionally,
Fossati et al. (2022) and Sasmaz et al. (2022) find that citizens in Indonesia
and Turkey, respectively, were more likely to support anti-democratic actions
if it benefited their party, which matches Mazepus and Toshkov’s (2021)
finding that Europeans were more supportive of anti-democratic actions if
their party was in power.
The effects of partisan-motivated reasoning seen through a “winner-loser”
gap are also present in related concepts. Existing studies have shown that after
elections, citizens who supported the election winners were more trustful of
the country’s political institutions (see: Hooghe, 2018, pp. 625–828, for a
robust discussion) and were more satisfied with the way democracy was
functioning in their country (Blais et al., 2017; Loveless, 2021; Singh et al.,
2012)—although Farrer and Zingher (2019) found this latter finding to only be
true in Western Europe. These studies greatly expand our knowledge of how
partisan interest can impact citizen preferences toward democracy and
governance in their country.
The existing literature points to some existing findings that are necessary
for theoretical development. These findings will be tested in the data analysis
section. First, given the “almost universal lip-service” to democracy and the
broad understanding that democracy has normative value, I hypothesize that
“explicit support for democracy” will not be meaningfully altered by whether
a citizen supports the current governing regime.
Bryan 5
Hypothesis 1. Support for the current governing regime will not be as-
sociated with meaningful changes to a citizen’s “explicit support for
democracy.”
On the other hand, the above literature strongly suggests that citizens are
more supportive of specific anti-democratic actions if they perceive partisan
benefit from such policies. Assuming the governing regime stands to benefit
from democratic erosion, this leads to a clear second hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2. Support for the current governing regime will be associated
with greater citizen support for specific anti-democratic actions.
These hypotheses raise a question unanswered by the existing literature:
how do citizens justify their consistent “explicit support for democracy” with
their more malleable support for specific anti-democratic actions? In this
article, I offer a theory that explains how citizens can maintain “explicit
support for democracy,” while supporting specific anti-democratic actions that
can give their side a partisan advantage. I hypothesize that citizens will alter
their conceptualization of democracy to fit their partisan self-interest. In other
words, citizens that support the regime in power will be more likely to
conceptualize democracy in terms of the majority’s right to rule, executive
power, and the need for stability. Those in the opposition, however, will be
more likely to consider democracy in terms of civil liberties and the rights of
the opposition. This allows both sides to assert their support for democracy,
despite disagreeing on specific actions or policies that are antithetical to liberal
democracy.
When considering König et al.’s (2022, p. 9) categories for conceptions of
democracy, it’s clear how certain conceptions of democracy might be in a
political party’s partisan interest. For example, a liberal conception of de-
mocracy emphasizes a strong set of civil liberties and fair elections. For the
opposition, strong civil liberties, like an ability to organize, protest, and
petition the government, are key to their future political goals. On the other
hand, an authoritarian conception of democracy emphasizes unchecked power
for certain individuals (de Regt, 2013; Kirsch & Welzel, 2019). For those
supporting the regime in power, they may see partisan benefit from an un-
checked executive that is free to mettle in elections, harass the opposition, or
control the press. Therefore, if citizens have a strong understanding that
democracy has normative value, but are free to construct their own under-
standing of the broad concept, they are likely to understand democracy in a
way that is consistent with their own partisan interest. This leads to a third
hypothesis:
Hypothesis 3. Support for the current governing regime will be associated
with more illiberal citizen conceptualizations of democracy.
The theory is supported by the existing literature that observes variation in

how citizens conceptualize democracy. Although most global citizens con-
ceptualize democracy in a liberal model (Canache, 2012), many scholars find
that the word “democracy” can carry different connotations across countries
(Alemán & Woods, 2016; Davidov et al., 2014; Schaffer, 2014) and within
them (Davis et al., 2021). Notably, using WVS data, studies have shown that
some citizens, especially in authoritarian countries, have poor understandings
of democracy, even associating the phrase with rule by the army or religious
figures (Cho, 2015; Zagrebina, 2020). In fact, these latter understandings of
democracy have been called “authoritarian notions of democracy,” which
often associate democracy with the obedience to wise rulers whose delegated
authority can allow them to avoid constitutional checks and public ac-
countability (Kirsch & Welzel, 2019; Kruse et al., 2019).
Additionally, the literature suggests that understandings of democracy
can be predictive of future political behavior. Citizens understanding de-
mocracy in an illiberal way can limit vertical accountability constraints on
anti-democratic actions. If citizens do not see subtle attacks on democracy as
such, then regimes eroding democracy won’t be punished for their trans-
gressions. Albertus and Grossman (2021) find that most citizens can identify
clear instances of anti-democratic transgressions, but much of modern
autocratization includes actions that may appear plausibly consistent with
democracy—especially for citizens who do not hold a strictly liberal
conceptualization of the term (Lührmann & Lindberg, 2018). Lastly, exactly
how citizens understand democracy can also impact their own political
participation, like rates of voting and participation in protest (Canache,
2012; Oser & Hooghe, 2018). Despite the wide range of conceptualizations
of democracy, and the importance of how citizens understand the term, the
literature has largely neglected how these citizen conceptualizations can
change or are driven by partisan interests. In other words, research has only
considered one’s conceptualization of democracy as a long-term value,
rather than a fluid attitude that citizens can update depending on their
interests.
Data, Methods, and Results

To evaluate the theory, I will combine two different methods using data from
the WVS and EVS. The first method is an observational study that will
examine cross-sectional data from the seventh wave of the WVS and the fifth
wave of the EVS, which were administered in conjunction from 2017 to 2022.
While the observational study is informative, it can be difficult to make claims
about attitudinal change using only cross-sectional data. Given these con-
cerns, I supplement the observational design with a within-country variation
approach that leverages multiple survey waves. For this method, I draw on
Bryan 7
data from the joint survey described above, but also the sixth wave of the
WVS, which was fielded from 2010 to 2014. By using two survey waves, I can
create within-country variation for the political coalitions supporting the
government in power. The two methods will use the same four dependent
variables and list of controls.
Dependent Variables
The operationalization of the dependent variables will be consistent across the
two methods. Generally speaking, the dependent variables have been oper-
ationalized in the literature using data from the WVS. There are a few in-
stances where I need to update the operationalization due to changes in the
question wording and a few instances where I believe I can make slight
innovations to better operationalize key concepts.
Explicit Support for Democracy. The first dependent variable, explicit support
for democracy, measures whether citizens express support for a democratic
political system and value living in a democracy when directly asked. Im-
portantly, these questions directly use the term “democracy,” which often
invokes “lip-service” support for a “motherhood” concept (Inglehart, 2003;
Mattes, 2018). This concept commonly appears in the literature and scholars
had coalesced around an index that combined two items from the WVS
questionnaire (Ariely & Davidov, 2011; Inglehart & Welzel, 2003; Jamal &
Nooruddin, 2010; Krieckhaus et al., 2014; Magalhães, 2014). The first item
asks respondents to rate whether it is very good, fairly good, fairly bad, or very
bad to have a democratic political system.
The second item used by these studies is a “Churchill” question that asked
respondents whether they agreed that “democracy may have problems, but it is
better than any other form of government.” This question was included in the
third and fourth waves of the WVS but was removed in later waves. Instead, I
opted to include a question that was added in the fifth, sixth, and seventh
waves that asks respondents to rate on a scale from 1 to 10 how important it is
for them to live in a country that is governed democratically. This question
similarly measures whether a respondent values democracy when explicitly
asked and has been used in prior studies as a part of indices to measure a
citizen’s broader “support for democracy” (Cho, 2014; Claassen, 2020;
Claassen & Magalhães, 2022; Ulbricht, 2018). To create the index, I inverted
the first question so higher values equate to stronger support for democracy,
scaled both questions to range from zero to three so they retain equal weight in
the index, and then summed the values of the two questions for each re-
spondent in the data. The exact question wordings for all survey items used to
construct dependent variables are located in Appendix A.
Rejection of Anti-Democratic Actions. The second dependent variable, rejection

of anti-democratic actions, measures whether a respondent supports general
policies that are antithetical to liberal democracy, but importantly does not use
the term “democracy” in the question wording. In the literature, this has been
referred to as support for autocratic alternatives, authoritarian sentiment, or
support for democracy “in practice.” Regardless of the exact term, studies that
utilize WVS data have usually combined two questions (Inglehart & Welzel,
2003; Krieckhaus et al., 2014; Magalhães, 2014). The first asks respondents to
rate whether it is very good, fairly good, fairly bad, or very bad to have a
strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections. The
second asks respondents whether it is very good, fairly good, fairly bad, or
very bad to have the army rule. I have scaled the two questions so they each
range from zero to three, with higher values indicating a less favorable (and
therefore more pro-democracy) response. I then summed the values for the
two questions to create an index that ranges from zero to six for a respondent’s
rejection of anti-democratic actions.
As an additional robustness check, I have also added an additional de-
pendent variable to measure a general preference for authority. The survey
asks each respondent to choose which of the following is most important:
maintaining order in the nation; giving people more say in important gov-
ernment decisions; fighting rising prices; and protecting freedom of speech.
The additional dependent variable, deemphasize order, is a dummy variable
that takes the value of one if the respondent ranked anything other than
“maintaining order in the nation” as the most important. Of the 124,208
respondents who answered the question, 76,639 answered something other
than maintaining order.
Conceptualization of Democracy. Democracy is a “thick” concept that contains

multiple layers and can be difficult for average citizens to define (Schaffer,
2014). Notably, König et al. (2022) identify six categories for conceptions of
democracy: liberal, direct, substantive, stealth, populist, and authoritarian.
Given the various dimensions, it is difficult to measure exactly what “de-
mocracy” means to everyday citizens with survey data. Some measures use an
inductive approach, whereby researchers ask open-ended questions and sort
the answers after the fact (Canache, 2012; Carrión, 2008).
Others have used a more deductive approach, where indicators are linked to
a predefined understanding of democracy. Many scholars, for example, use a
battery of questions included in the fifth, sixth, and seventh waves of the WVS
to operationalize how citizens are conceptualizing democracy. In the battery,
the survey gives each respondent a series of possible “characteristics” of
democracy and asks them to rate, on a scale from 1 to 10, how “essential” the
characteristic is to democracy. While still limited in some ways, the battery of
questions allows respondents to include a range of characteristics into their
Bryan 9
understanding of democracy without needing to make tradeoffs between them

(Norris, 2011; Welzel, 2011).1 For the purposes of this article, I am mostly
interested in gaining a general sense of whether the respondent has an illiberal
conceptualization of democracy that prioritizes benefits for those in power or a
more liberal understanding that emphasizes strong civil rights. To accomplish
this task with the available data, I create an index from two survey items that
represent a liberal and illiberal understanding of democracy. I classify the
main “liberal” characteristic of democracy to be “civil rights protect people
from state oppression” and the primary illiberal characteristic to be “people
obey their rulers.” The former has been used to operationalize a liberal
conception of democracy and the latter has been used to operationalize an
authoritarian conception of democracy (König et al., 2022, p. 15).
I construct the index by subtracting a respondent’s answer to the illiberal
characteristic of democracy from the liberal characteristic. Therefore, if a
respondent believes that people obeying their rulers is more “essential” to
democracy than civil rights, then the respondent would have a lower
combined score on the index. The index ranges from 10 to 10.2 Although
this metric only captures a small sliver of a citizen’s broader understanding
of democracy, it serves as a simple understanding of whether a respon-
dent’s understanding of democracy ranges in a more liberal or illiberal
direction.
Model and Controls

The two studies use a multilevel linear regression with random intercepts and
slopes at the country level for the explanatory variable of interest—with the
goal of analyzing within-country variation given the difficulty in comparing
these attitudes across cultural contexts. Models that have deemphasize order
as the dependent variable report the average marginal effects from a multilevel
logistic regression with random intercepts and slopes at the country level for
the key independent variable. The models also include a list of demographic
control variables (see Solt, 2008, 2012 for a discussion). Notably, I include a
variable for age and dummy variables for whether the respondent identified as
male, was married, and had children. The WVS converts detailed country-
specific educational attainment into an ordinal variable that indicates if the
respondent has a low, medium, or high level of education. I have turned these
into dummy variables and omitted the medium level of education to serve as
the comparison group. I have also included a dummy variable, employed, that
represents respondents who are employed full time, part time, or are self-
employed. I have also included a dummy variable, unemployed, if the re-
spondent voluntary disclosed that they were unemployed. These two em-
ployment variables are in comparison to retirees, students, housewives, and
“others.” Descriptive statistics for all variables for the respective populations
of the two studies are located in Appendix C. The data are also weighted at the
respondent level to be nationally representative for age, sex, education, and
region for respective countries, meaning that all standard errors are obtained
using a robust sandwich estimator that accounts for unspecified hetero-
skedasticity (Dupraz, 2013).
Study 1: Observational Analysis of 74 Countries

This study uses the joint survey data from the seventh wave of the WVS and
the fifth wave of the EVS. The two survey waves were administered in
conjunction and interviewed 153,716 respondents across 90 countries from
2017 to 2022 (EVS/WVS, 2022). The surveys targeted a nationally repre-
sentative sample of country populations and included over 231 variables.
Most countries in Europe were covered by the EVS, while the WVS ad-
ministered surveys in the Americas, Africa, and Asia.
To operationalize those citizens that support the current government, I first
identified which political parties in each country supported the ruling gov-
ernment at the time of the survey. I relied on the V-Parties dataset’s “Gov-
ernment Support” (v2pagovsup) variable to determine if a political party
supported the current government (Lindberg et al., 2022).3 I then created a
dummy variable for each respondent, partisan in power, that indicates if they
expressed support for one of the political parties that V-Parties indicates was
supportive of the regime in power at the time of the survey.4 The coding
scheme was irrelevant in a small handful of countries, like those that did not
have a competitive party system (e.g., China, Belarus, Jordan, and Vietnam),
those where the executive was not clearly affiliated with a political party (e.g.,
Peru and Thailand), and those where there was a power transition while the
survey was in the field (Armenia, Iceland, and Malaysia). The resulting dataset
included 74 countries and territories comprising 127,061 possible respon-
dents. The list of countries included in the study, the political parties coded as
partisans in power, and the rationale for excluded countries are located in
Appendix B. Of the possible 127,061 respondents, 42,787 were coded as
partisans in power. The number is significantly less than 50% because 34,198
citizens claimed to not support any of the major parties in their respective
country.
The output from the multilevel model is displayed in Table 1. The
dependent variable for the first model is an index of two questions that
directly ask respondents whether they support a democratic political
system and value living in a democracy. As can be seen in the first row,
partisans in power are significantly more likely to believe democracy is a
good system of government and value living in a democracy. This calls
hypothesis 1 into question and is somewhat surprising given that “lip-
service” to democracy is near universal (Inglehart, 2003) and constant over
Bryan
Table 1. Multilevel Model Results for Effects on Citizen Attitudes Toward Democracy.
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Variables Explicit Support Index Reject Anti-Dem Policies Index Deemphasize Order Conceptualization Index
Partisan in power 0.0913*** (0.0195) 0.138*** (0.0281) 0.0442*** (0.00797) 0.431*** (0.0696)
Age 0.00657*** (0.00114) 0.00776*** (0.00131) 0.00136*** (0.000202) 0.000315 (0.00166)
Male 0.0396*** (0.0153) 0.0338* (0.0174) 0.0198*** (0.00549) 0.0387 (0.0436)
Married 0.0348** (0.0155) 0.0332 (0.0200) 0.0162*** (0.00519) 0.0377 (0.0425)
Parent 0.0177 (0.0213) 0.0643** (0.0314) 0.00245 (0.00668) 0.0725* (0.0440)
Lower education 0.172*** (0.0232) 0.258*** (0.0283) 0.000353 (0.00659) 0.382*** (0.0635)
Higher education 0.235*** (0.0235) 0.312*** (0.0341) 0.0177*** (0.00635) 0.563*** (0.0645)
Employed 0.0102 (0.0156) 1.34 × 10 5 (0.0200) 0.0185*** (0.00549) 0.113*** (0.0383)
Unemployed 0.0539** (0.0241) 0.0432* (0.0227) 0.0158** (0.00719) 0.0384 (0.0627)
Constant 4.545*** (0.0665) 3.525*** (0.0970) 2.223*** (0.176)
Observations 118,944 114,693 123,695 114,569
Number of groups 74 74 74
Standard errors in parentheses.
*** p < .01, ** p < .05, * p < .1.
Notes: Positive coefficients represent a more pro-democracy response. Data is weighted to be representative of national populations. Respondents who did not
answer one of the questions necessary for a dependent variable, or their age, were dropped from the analysis. The different number of observations for each model
is a result of a differing number of non-responses for each question. Models 1, 2, and 4 are multilevel linear regressions. Model 3 represents the average marginal
effects of a multilevel logit regression. The Partisan in Power variables have random intercepts and slopes at the country level.
11
time (Voeten, 2016). The literature, however, does suggest a potential

mechanism for this effect. Studies have shown that citizens are typically
less satisfied with the functioning of democracy in their country when their
preferred party loses elections (Merkley et al., 2019; Singh et al., 2012) and
that citizens who are less satisfied with how democracy is running in their
country are subsequently less likely to support it in theory (Booth &
Seligson, 2009). Therefore, maybe it isn’t surprising that citizens value a
system of government more when it has recently delivered their preferred
political outcomes.5
The second model measures the effects on a respondent’s rejection of
having a strong executive and having the army takeover when the government
is incompetent. Unlike the first model, partisans in power were significantly
less likely to reject these specific anti-democratic actions—a finding that is
strongly consistent with the existing literature (Cohen et al., 2022; Mazepus &
Toshkov, 2021; Singer, 2018) and provides evidence for hypothesis 2. As an
additional robustness check to measure a more general authoritarian senti-
ment, model 3 displays the average marginal effects of a multilevel logistic
regression predicting the probability that a respondent emphasized main-
taining order over other alternatives. Model 3 suggests that partisans in power
were 4.4% more likely to prioritize something other than “maintaining order
in the nation”—even after controlling for the slew of demographic variables
and including random intercepts and slopes at the country level.
What is not explained by the literature, however, is how partisans in power
might be rationalizing their increasing explicit support for democracy with
their simultaneous growing support for specific anti-democratic actions. The
empirical puzzle is even more noteworthy when considering there is a sta-
tistically significant and positive correlation coefficient of 0.25 between the
two dependent variables in the first two models. Similarly, when examining
the coefficients on the control variables in the first two models, factors that
typically drive explicit support for democracy also typically drive rejection of
autocratic alternatives. The lone exception is the partisan in power variable—
which has a statistically significant and opposite impact on the two dependent
variables in the models.
In this paper, I offer a theory that citizens will alter their conceptualization
of democracy to satisfy their understanding that “democracy” has normative
value with their desire for the political benefits that come from democratic
erosion. As can be seen in the fourth model, on average, partisans in power
held more illiberal conceptualizations of democracy by being more likely to
claim that democracy requires people to obey their rulers, while deempha-
sizing that democracy requires the protection of civil rights. It is worth noting
that a coefficient of 0.431 on a scale that ranges from 10 to 10 does not
represent a monumental overhaul in one’s understanding of democracy but
instead reflects a small, but significant movement toward a more illiberal
Bryan 13
conceptualization. The partisan in power variable does, however, have a

notable impact when comparing it to other controls variables. Appendix D1
reports the beta coefficients for Table 1, which standardizes the impact of
independent variables to compare the magnitudes of effect. As can be seen in
model 4 in Appendix D1, a respondent’s political affiliation was equally
impactful to determining their understanding of democracy as their level of
education—as the magnitude of the beta coefficient on the partisan in power
variable was about equal to the two education variables. The results suggest
that partisan interests can be a significant driver of one’s conceptualization of
democracy and provide strong evidence for hypothesis 3.
While the results tell a clear story when combining the 74 countries into a
single set of models, the design raises an obvious question: is the story similar
across the 74 countries, or is it predominantly driven by a distinct subset? To
begin analyzing this question, I ran models 1, 2, and 4 for each of the in-
dividual 74 countries and I have reported the coefficients and the significance
for the partisan in power variable for each country in Appendixes D.2. The
results are not entirely consistent across the 74 countries and often reflect
differences in the ruling party compared to the opposition. For example, in
some countries, like Serbia or Finland, right-wing governing regimes were
less liberal than the opposition and the partisan in power variable has a
negative and statistically significant effect regardless of whether the depen-
dent variable is a respondent’s explicit support for democracy, rejection of
autocratic alternatives, or conceptualization of democracy. In the other cases,
like in Slovenia, the governing coalition is more liberal than the opposition
and the three coefficients are all positive and statistically significant. In all of
these cases, however, and in 61 out of 74 cases, the coefficient on the partisan
in power variable for predicting one’s explicit support for democracy is larger
in size than the coefficient predicting one’s support for autocratic
alternatives—suggesting the difference in the coefficients shown on the
partisan in power variable between the first and second models in Table 1 is
driven by a broad subset of the cases and not a distinct few.
When further considering how the effect may vary across countries, it
might be reasonable to expect that citizens are more likely to alter their
conceptualization fastest when there is more at stake. If democracy is salient
and a pressing political issue, it would likely drive citizens to more quickly
update their understandings of democracy to meet their more salient partisan
self-interests. To test this question, I collected three characteristics for each
country from V-Dem: the strength of liberal democracy (v2x_libdem), the
change in the strength of liberal democracy over the last 5 years, and the
degree of political polarization (v2cacamps) (Coppedge, Gerring, Knutsen,
Lindberg, Teorell, Alizada et al., 2022). The values for each country in the
study are displayed in Appendix D3. Andorra and Puerto Rico are not in-
cluded in the V-Dem dataset and therefore were excluded from the extended
analysis, which brought the total sample of countries to 72. To test if the effect
is stronger for more democratic, backsliding, or more polarized societies, I
have re-run the models but cut the sample of countries in half to only include
the 36 least democratic countries (Appendix Table D4), the 36 most dem-
ocratic countries (Appendix Table D5), the 36 countries with the greatest
decline in the strength of liberal democracy in the 5 years preceding the survey
(Appendix Table D6), the 36 countries with the greatest strengthening of
liberal democracy in the 5 years preceding the survey (Appendix Table D7),
the 36 most polarized countries (Appendix Table D8), and the 36 least po-
larized countries (Appendix Table D9).
The results presented in Appendix D suggest that the effects displayed in
Table 1 are most prominent in countries with weak democracies, in countries
experiencing greater democratic backsliding, and in countries that are po-
larized. In fact, the difference between the coefficients on the partisan in
power variable when measuring its effect on explicit support for democracy
versus rejection of autocratic alternatives is larger in weaker democracies
compared to stronger democracies, in more backsliding versus less back-
sliding countries, and in more polarized societies. Additionally, the coefficient
on the partisan in power variable is more negative when predicting the
conceptualization index—implying that partisans in power have a more il-
liberal understanding of democracy—for weaker democracies, countries
experiencing greater democratic backsliding, and more polarized societies.
It is also quite clear from Appendix D, however, that the effect still applies
for stronger democracies, countries with less democratic backsliding, and less
polarized societies. Even in these subsets of the data (Appendix Tables D5,
D7, and D9), the coefficients on the partisan in power variable are statistically
significant (at least at the 10% level) and in the same direction as those
displayed in Table 1. To test a “least likely” sample of countries, I even limited
the sample to the 10 countries6 that were in the top 20 strongest democracies
and the top 20 least polarized countries (Appendix Table D.10), many of
which were northern European democracies. In this subsample, the coeffi-
cients lose their statistical significance, but the coefficients remain in their
expected direct and are close to achieving statistical significance in the second
and third models. Taken together, the expanded results suggest that the
findings displayed in Table 1 are a common, albeit not completely universal,
pattern that emerges across the 74 countries in the sample.
There is one additional concern with the data analysis: the WVS has a high
rate of non-response, especially on more complex questions pertaining to
democracy. For example, of the possible 127,061 possible respondents,
12,061 did not respond to or were not asked7 at least one of the questions used
to create the conceptualization of democracy index that serves as the de-
pendent variable in model 4. While most studies drop these respondents,
which was done in Table 1, there are often concerns that those citizens who
Bryan 15
choose not to respond are not a random sample. By dropping those re-
spondents, the researcher can risk substantially biasing the sample (King et al.,
2001). To combat these concerns and perform an additional robustness check,
Table D.11 in the appendix displays models 1, 2, and 4, but with filling in the
missing values for questions required for the dependent variables and a re-
spondents age.8 I used multivariate normal regression to impute the values,
which uses an iterative Markov chain Monte Carlo method (Rubin, 1987). By
using a multiple imputation technique, the analysis explicitly accounts for
uncertainty associated with filling in missing data by yielding parameter
estimates that average over a number of plausible replacement values (Enders,
2010, p. 189). As can be seen, the significance on the partisan in power
variable is robust in all three models and the coefficients are largely
unchanged.
Study 2: Changes in Views of Democracy from Before and After

Changes of Power
While the observational study is informative, it can be challenging to make
claims about attitudinal change from cross-sectional data. To combat this
concern, I supplement the observational study with a second design that
utilizes within-case variation by leveraging the joint WVS and EVS survey
that was fielded from 2017 to 2022, but also the sixth wave of the WVS, which
interviewed over 89,000 respondents across 60 countries from 2010 to 2014.9
To select cases, I identify countries that were included in the sixth wave of
the WVS from 2010 to 2014 and the joint survey from 2017 to 2022, but also
experienced a change of power between the two survey waves.10 To oper-
ationalize a change of power, I use the V-Dem’s variable for “election ex-
ecutive turnover,” which identifies country-year instances of turnover in the
executive office as a result of a national election (Coppedge, Gerring,
Knutsen, Lindberg, Teorell, Alizada et al., 2022). For these cases, sup-
porters of some parties were in power during the 2010–2014 survey wave and
then were in the opposition in the 2017–2022 wave. On the other hand,
supporters of other parties were in the opposition and then were in power.11
This allows for observing the difference in attitudinal change for partisans that
moved into power between the survey waves and partisans that were removed
from power.
The case selection strategy yielded 14 countries, each with one survey
wave from the sixth wave of the WVS (2010–2014) and one survey wave from
the joint WVS and EVS survey (2017–2022). The list of countries and the
years of their respective survey waves are listed in Appendix B. From the 28
individual survey waves, there are 38,990 possible respondents. Of those,
10,503 supported political parties that were in the opposition in the first survey
wave but won the election between the two surveys. These respondents are
given a value of one on the dummy variable Rose to Power, while all other
respondents receive a zero. Of the remaining respondents, 10,628 supported
parties that were in power in the first wave but lost the election between survey
waves. These respondents are given a value of one on the dummy variable Fell
from Power. For example, in the United States, Republican partisans in the
2011 WVS survey and the 2017 WVS survey will receive the value of one for
Rose to Power because the party won the 2016 presidential election, while
Democrats will receive the value of one for Fell from Power.
To execute the within-case variation design, I also include the variable
Partisan In Power, which takes the value of one if the respondent was in a
party that fell from power and the survey was in the first wave for the re-
spective country, or if the respondent supported a party that rose to power and
the survey was in the second wave for the respective country. Following the
example from the United States, Republican partisans in the 2017 survey and
Democrats in the 2011 survey would be labeled as Partisan In Power.
Therefore, the variables Rose to Power and Fell from Power control for
ideological differences between the coalitions. Their coefficients are in
comparison to respondents who did not claim to support a party or claimed to a
support a party that was never in government, while Partisan In Power
captures the differential effect of the party being in control of government
irrespective of that party’s ideological disposition across the two survey
waves. The dependent variable for the four models, the list of controls, and the
use of a multilevel modeling with random country intercepts and slopes on the
key independent variable are the same as the first study.
The results are displayed in Table 2 and largely mirror those in Table 1. In
the first model, which measures effects on a respondent’s explicit support for
democracy, the Partisan In Power variable is insignificant and close to zero,
which is consistent with hypothesis 1 and suggests that changes of power do
not have drastic effects on citizen expressions of support for democracy when
directly asked. In the second, third, and fourth models, however, the coef-
ficient for Partisan In Power is negative, statistically significant, and similar in
magnitude to the first study, which provides more evidence for hypotheses 2
and 3. Specifically, when a political party is in power, the data in model 2
suggest that the party’s supporters become more comfortable with having a
strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and having a larger
role for the military relative to their partisan opponents. Similarly, model 3
suggests they will become, on average, 5.2% more likely to prioritize
“maintaining order in the nation” over other alternatives.
When considering how partisans in power might justify their continued
explicit support for democracy with their growing comfort with specific anti-
democratic actions, the fourth model suggests that when citizens support a
party in power, their conceptualization of democracy begins to deemphasize
civil rights and emphasize obeying authority. The negative coefficient in
Bryan
Table 2. Difference-In-Difference Multilevel Model Results for Effects on Citizen Attitudes Toward Democracy.
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Variables Explicit Support Index Reject Anti-Dem Policies Index Deemphasize Order Conceptualization Index
Partisan in power 0.00527 (0.0424) 0.0990** (0.0471) 0.0523*** (0.0139) 0.321*** (0.111)
Rose to power 0.189*** (0.0575) 0.0237 (0.0585) 0.0415* (0.0242) 0.0302 (0.144)
Fell from power 0.232** (0.107) 0.0534 (0.0682) 0.00547 (0.0184) 0.417* (0.238)
Age 0.0108*** (0.00282) 0.0100*** (0.00284) 0.00136*** (0.000285) 0.00367 (0.00410)
Male 0.0580 (0.0363) 0.0733 (0.0461) 0.0195* (0.0107) 0.0929 (0.0954)
Married 0.0726*** (0.0231) 0.0875** (0.0379) 0.0187** (0.00782) 0.0992** (0.0478)
Parent 0.0564 (0.0486) 0.113* (0.0610) 0.0287** (0.0112) 0.222** (0.109)
Lower education 0.186*** (0.0395) 0.199*** (0.0532) 0.0130 (0.0184) 0.312** (0.125)
Higher education 0.325*** (0.0603) 0.468*** (0.0807) 0.0126 (0.0131) 0.978*** (0.134)
Employed 0.0343 (0.0228) 0.0570* (0.0321) 0.00536 (0.00701) 0.120 (0.0808)
Unemployed 0.0761 (0.0867) 0.0875 (0.0962) 0.000976 (0.0153) 0.0806 (0.169)
Constant 4.253*** (0.193) 3.582*** (0.211) 2.080*** (0.301)
Observations 36,266 34,528 37,494 35,411
Number of groups 14 14 14
Standard errors in parentheses.

*** p < .01, ** p < .05, * p < .1.
Notes: Positive coefficients represent a more pro-democracy response. Data is weighted to be representative of national populations. Respondents who did not
answer one of the questions necessary for a dependent variable, or their age, were dropped from the analysis. The different number of observations for each model,
then, is a result of a differing number of non-responses for each question. Models 1, 2, and 4 are multilevel linear regressions. Model 3 represents the average
marginal effects of a multilevel logit regression. The In Power variables have random intercepts and slopes at the country level.
17
model 4 is slightly smaller in the second study but provides additional ev-
idence for hypothesis 3 while using intra-country variation for the party in
power. The beta coefficients and the robustness check that imputes missing
values are located in Appendix E.1 and E.3, respectively.
Like the first study, when examining the individual countries more closely,
there are some deviant cases and there is not a single homogenous story that
explains the results in Table 2, but rather some general trends that are common
and contribute to the findings. To examine the individual cases more closely,
Table E.2 in the appendix displays the average score on the conceptualization
index (the dependent variable in model 4) by country and coalition. Addi-
tionally, Figure 1 reflects the coefficients and the 95% confidence intervals for
the partisan in power variable that results when running model 4 for each of
the 14 cases.12 As is clear in Figure 1, there are two cases where the coalition
rising to power actually changes their conception of democracy to be more
liberal vis-à-vis the coalition falling from power—a trend that is contrary to
the overall findings and hypothesis 3. A brief examination of the two cases,
New Zealand and Argentina, does reveal some limitations of the design.
The first and largest deviant case is New Zealand. In the sixth wave of the
WVS in 2011, the New Zealand National Party was in control of government. In
2017, an odd Labor-led coalition, which included the further left Green party and
the nationalist New Zealand First party, ousted the long-serving center-right New
Figure 1. Coefficients on partisan in power variable predicting conceptualization

index for individual cases.
Bryan 19
Zealand National Party. Of the respondents coded as rose to power in the two
waves of the survey, 76% said they support the Labor Party—compared to 7%
who said they would support New Zealand First and 17% who said they would
support the Greens. As can be seen in Appendixes E.1, those that rose to power in
New Zealand had a significantly more liberal understanding of democracy in the
second wave. So why would supporters of a coalition comprised primarily of a
center-left and a far-left party have a more liberal conceptualization of democracy
relative to their partisan opponents in 2020 than 2011 despite their potential
partisan interest in understanding democracy through a lens of authority?
My hypothesis is that the extremely salient trend of the rise of nationalist
right, especially in the English-speaking world, during this time caused the
center-left parties in New Zealand to rally to liberal democracy—despite their
immediate partisan interests. In fact, the leader of the Labor Party, Jacinda
Ardern, has criticized Donald Trump (Oppenheim, 2017) and sharply rejected
the global populist trend (Graham-McLay, 2020). Therefore, when it comes to
emphasizing civil rights as a critical component of democracy, their response
to international trends superseded their own partisan interest. This points to a
potential limitation of the within-case design: it assumes there are no time
trends (aside from the change of power) that could have a heterogenous impact
on the different coalitions.
In Argentina,13 the variable Rose to Power takes the value of one if a
respondent said they would support the Together for Change coalition, the
Radical Civic Union party, or the Republican Proposal Party. In 2013, during
the sixth wave of the WVS, the coalition was weak and only 85 respondents
out of a possible 1030 claimed to support one of the three parties. In the years
following, however, the general dissatisfaction with the ruling Peronist regime
united the opposition behind Mauricio Macri, the center-right mayor of
Buenos Aires, who offered a nonconfrontational campaign that emphasized an
anti-populist message focused on economic liberalization and social tolerance
(Romero & Gilbert, 2015; Schiumerini, 2019). Therefore, in 2017 during the
seventh wave of the WVS, the coalition led by Macri was no longer a minor
force in Argentine politics like it was in 2013. As a result, in the 2017 survey
wave, 306 out of the 1003 respondents claimed to support Together for
Change, Radical Civic Union, or Republican Proposal.
Therefore, it is clear that the coalition greatly expanded from 2013 to
2017—with a major concentration of that expansion taking place in the
wealthier urban sections of the country (Calvo, 2019). As a result, it’s possible
that rather than the coalition’s supporters gaining a more liberal conceptu-
alization of democracy vis-à-vis their fellow citizens, the coalition grew to
include some of the country’s most liberal citizens. This points out a second
limitation of the within-case variation design: when attributing the coefficients
to attitudinal change, it assumes that the coalitions are constant between the
two survey waves—even if some of these effects can be mitigated by in-

cluding control variables like education.
While it might be true that the global trends impacting New Zealand or
the coalition shifts impacting the Argentine case might be having the op-
posite effect on right-wing parties that rose to power in Poland and the
United States—cases with strong negative coefficients—it is notable that 12
out of the 14 cases had negative coefficients on the Partisan In Power
variable, with many of them achieving or approaching statistical signifi-
cance. An examination of the individual cases in Appendixes E.2 empha-
sizes the heterogeneity across countries, but the finding observed in model 4
remains constant across most cases. For example, many of the cases are
examples of center-right or right-wing coalitions defeating center-left or left-
wing coalitions. Interestingly, there is some variation in the movement
between coalitions in their conceptualization of democracy. As can be seen
in the Appendixes E.2, the negative coefficient displayed in Figure 1 for
Australia is driven by a center-right coalition made up of the Liberal and
Nationalist parties rising to power and having a less liberal conception of
democracy, while the center-left Labor party falling out of power takes a
more liberal conception of democracy.
In other instances of right-wing parties moving into power, however, the
negative coefficient is driven more strongly by one of the coalitions. In the
United States, the coefficient is mostly driven by the right-wing Republican
party taking power and having a more illiberal conception of democracy,
while in Poland, the coefficient is mostly driven by the moderate Civic
Platform coalition leaving power and having a more liberal conception. In
Japan, the center-right party taking power actually has a more liberal con-
ception of democracy after taking power, but their more liberal shift is
significantly smaller than their center-left rivals who were moving out of
power. Despite the heterogeneity in the specific stories for each country, in 12
out of the 14 cases, coalitions rising to power had understandings of de-
mocracy that became more illiberal relative to their partisan opponents when
moving from the survey wave before the election to the wave after the
election. It should also be noted that this story also applies in Pakistan,
Mexico, and Taiwan—countries where the political cleavages vary from the
left-right divide commonly seen in Europe, the United States, Australia, and
New Zealand.
Overall, while the second study does have some limitations and is not
infallible for an individual case, by averaging the effect across the 14 cases, it
provides additional evidence that supplements the first study. Taken together,
the two studies show a clear pattern that citizens will adjust their concep-
tualization of democracy, even slightly, to accommodate their partisan
interest.
Bryan 21
Discussion
The findings from the two studies tell a similar story. First, a citizen’s
preferred political party holding power does not reduce their support for
democracy when directly asked. If anything, the results from the first study
suggest that these citizens might be slightly more likely to express support
for democracy. On the other hand, models 2 and 3 in the 2 studies strongly
suggest that these same citizens will be more likely to support specific anti-
democratic actions or alternatives to democracy, like increasing the power of
the executive to bypass the legislature. These findings are largely consistent
with the existing literature but raise an unanswered question: how do people
justify their continued “lip service” to democracy with their increased
support for anti-democratic actions? The results from the fourth model in the
two studies suggest that these citizens are more likely to hold an illiberal
conceptualization of democracy. In other words, when democratic principles
stand in the way of potential partisan gain, citizens update their definition of
democracy to fit their partisan interests.
While the effects in the regression output regarding a citizen’s conception
of democracy are somewhat small, the operationalizations are blunt and meant
for a generalized cross-national study. It’s easy to see how these findings can
be applied to a more specific context. For example, Hungarian citizens who
support the current authoritarian-populist regime (Norris & Inglehart, 2019)
may believe that limiting the free press is crucial to Hungarian democracy.
Similarly, Republican partisans in the United States may view strict re-
strictions on voting access as a necessary component of protecting American
democracy. When considering this is the contextualized application of these
findings, it’s unsurprising that these subtle changes in understandings of
democracy might only marginally register on a question asking respondents to
rate the essentialness to democracy of “people obeying their rulers” or “civil
rights protect people from state oppression.” Future research on this subject
should examine how a citizen’s conceptualization of democracy is specifically
molded by politically salient issues in their home countries. Certainly, more
specific and contextualized survey data that can operationalize all of König
et al.’s (2022) categories for conceptions of democracy, or even interview-
based research, can help add significant details to the broad-based findings in
this article.
Additionally, I do not believe these findings are contradictory to Graham
and Svolik’s (2020) assertion that most citizens are able to identify clear anti-
democratic transgressions. Instead, the two findings, taken together, create a
clearer story that can help understand why many leaders attack democracy
behind a “democratic façade” (Lührmann & Lindberg, 2018). If most citizens
have normative commitments to democracy and can identify clear democratic
transgressions, but also if democracy is a “thick” concept that can be molded
to fit partisan interests, then rational leaders trying to stay in power would

identify policy options that offer partisan benefit, but are also plausibly
consistent with democracy. The result, then, is that whether the action actually
transgresses the tenets of democracy becomes just another political issue that
partisans bicker over.
The findings have broad implications for scholars and pro-democracy
stakeholders. First, the findings suggest that scholars should consider one’s
understanding of democracy to be as much a fluid political attitude as it is a
core long-term value. It is important to note, however, that it’s unlikely that
citizens will drastically change their definitions of democracy overnight,
which is supported by the smaller coefficients in this article. With that said,
even small changes in one’s conceptualization can be impactful. Importantly,
much of modern democratic erosion takes place behind a “democratic façade”
(Lührmann & Lindberg, 2018), so backsliding often plausibly appears as
normal democratic procedure. Therefore, only minor changes in one’s con-
ceptualization of democracy can be the difference in viewing these actions as
violations of democracy or not.
Second, the findings reinforce that researchers should take caution when
asking respondents about “democracy.” Not only does the term carry different
meanings across different contexts, but the meanings can fluctuate for in-
dividual citizens depending on their immediate partisan interests. This is not to
say that the questions are not valuable and cannot be informative, but it’s
critical that scholars are cautious when interpreting findings that use these
questions.
Third, scholars should pay special attention to the relationship between
citizen interests and the understanding of core political concepts. This paper
shows that partisan interests can impact how citizens understand democracy,
but can reinforcing the meaning of concepts also shape policy preferences?
For example, does being exposed to messaging about how a specific policy is
undemocratic reduce support for that policy? In other words, how robust is the
normative value of the term “democracy” and can shaping understandings of
democracy actually shape policy preferences? While this paper shows that
interests can shape the understanding of concepts, can the causal arrow go the
other way as well?
Lastly, pro-democracy stakeholders should know that getting citizens to
value “democracy” broadly is not enough to advance pro-democracy po-
sitions. General calls for “defending democracy” may sound attractive and
even poll well among the mass public, but they are not a specific and clear
call to action. Instead, stakeholders need to shine a light on democratic
erosion and clearly articulate why they are in violation of the core tenets of
democracy. By making a more direct case, pro-democracy stakeholders
could prevent citizens from seeing democratic erosion as consistent with
democracy when it suits their partisan interests. In other words, fighting for
Bryan 23
democracy may be more about defining democracy than by getting citizens

to defend the idea.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Carl LeVan, Agustina Giraudy, Austin Hart, Ian Reynolds,
Anastassiya Perevezentseva, Hatem Zayed, Ozan Cetin, and Grace Benson for their
consistent feedback and support in developing the project, as well as the editors and
three excellent peer reviewers for their time and attention. I would also like to thank
attendants at the Midwest Political Science Association Annual Conference and the
American University Tri-School Conference for their thoughtful comments and
feedback, especially David Barker, Katsunori Seki, Valentin Daur, and Seongjoon
Ahn.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.
Data Availability Statement

Replication materials can be found at Bryan (2022). Underlying data for the
replication materials from the World Values and European Values Study can be
found at https://www.gesis.org/en/services/finding-and-accessing-data/european-
values-study/integrated-values-surveys-ivs-1981-2021. Underlying data from
V-DEM can be found at: https://www.v-dem.net/data/
ORCID iD
James D. Bryan  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9018-4701
Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
Notes
1. While I acknowledge that many of these indicators may be understood differently
across different contexts, my two methods are observing within-country differ-
ences, which helps to mitigate these concerns (Davis et al., 2021).
2. While the question wording asks respondents to rate the characteristics on a scale
from 1 to 10, with higher values indicating a greater degree of essentialness for
democracy, the WVS will code the response as a zero if the respondent spon-
taneously insists that the characteristic is against democracy. I have retained these
responses as zeros, so a respondent’s rating for each characteristic ranges from zero
to ten.
3. I coded any political party that was the senior partner in a coalition, the junior
partner in a coalition, or a party that was not represented in government but was
supportive of the existing government as a “partisan in power.”
4. The WVS and EVS joint survey asked respondents: “If there were a national
election tomorrow, for which party on this list would you vote?” I coded the
dummy variable as a one if the respondent answered with a party currently in
power. This broadly follows Singh et al. (2012), who find that the most important
factor in determining “winner-loser” effects is whether the respondent voted for a
party that is currently in government. While other studies have used an ordinal
variable to code party support (Berglund et al., 2006; Dalton, 2016) that dif-
ferentiates a degree of “closeness” to a party, the WVS survey only asks a single
question related to party preference. This single question, however, offers sub-
stantial benefits, like asking the respondent their preference in the moment, rather
than a past preference.
5. The survey asked respondents to rate their satisfaction with their country’s political
system on a scale from 1 to 10. When using this question as the dependent variable
in model 1, partisans in power were substantially more likely to express satis-
faction with their country’s political system—confirming the findings in the
existing literature. Providing more evidence for this explanation, when including
government satisfaction as a control variable in model 1, the coefficient on the
partisan in power variable is substantially smaller. I would like to thank Valentin
Daur for offering this suggestion.
6. The 10 countries are Australia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Netherlands, New
Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland.
7. Some countries were surveyed by the EVS and WVS. In the case of the Neth-
erlands and Denmark, one of the waves omitted questions necessary for con-
ceptualization index—accounting for approximately 3500 missing responses.
These values are imputed in the robustness check.
8. I chose to limit the imputations to survey questions that had ordinal, rather than
binary responses. Missing values for gender, marital status, parental status, ed-
ucation, and employment are coded as zeros. There were very few missing values
for demographic indicators. To impute values, I also used a respondent’s interest in
politics and the size of the city they live. I excluded these variables in the main
models because the former confounds the dependent variables and the latter was
missing in three countries in the survey. When including these control variables,
the findings from the two studies are largely unchanged.
Bryan 25
9. To conduct analysis, I used the EVS and WVS joint trend file (EVS, 2022;
Haerpfer et al., 2022).
10. The only exception is Slovakia, which was surveyed by the WVS and EVS in the
joint survey, but there was a change of power between survey waves.
11. Some cases that fit the main criterion had to be dropped because the electoral
coalition shifted so severely between the sixth and seventh waves of the survey that it
was not a relevant comparison. In Ukraine, for example, there was a change of power
between the sixth wave of the WVS in 2011 and the seventh wave in 2020. The
issue, however, is that the political party that took power in 2019, Servant of the
People, did not exist in 2011 and did not have a clear ideological predecessor.
12. These were standard weighted linear regression models. A multilevel model was
not required because each model only consisted of a single country.
13. I would like to thank Professor Agustina Giraudy for assisting with analyzing this
case.
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Author Biography
James D. Bryan is a PhD candidate at the American University School of
International Service. James primarily focuses on comparative public opinion,
protests, democratization, and quantitative methods.

What Kind of Democracy Do We All Support

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What Kind of Democracy Do We All Support

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Original Article

Comparative Political Studies

Supporting What Kind of Democracy?

The theory is supported by the existing literature that observes variation in

Data, Methods, and Results

Rejection of Anti-Democratic Actions. The second dependent variable, rejection

Conceptualization of Democracy. Democracy is a “thick” concept that contains

understanding of democracy without needing to make tradeoffs between them

Model and Controls

Study 1: Observational Analysis of 74 Countries

(1) (2) (3) (4)

time (Voeten, 2016). The literature, however, does suggest a potential

conceptualization. The partisan in power variable does, however, have a

Study 2: Changes in Views of Democracy from Before and After

(1) (2) (3) (4)

Standard errors in parentheses.

Figure 1. Coefﬁcients on partisan in power variable predicting conceptualization

two survey waves—even if some of these effects can be mitigated by in-

to ﬁt partisan interests, then rational leaders trying to stay in power would

democracy may be more about deﬁning democracy than by getting citizens

Declaration of Conﬂicting Interests

Data Availability Statement

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