Democracy in the Eyes of the Beholder: Laypeople’s Understandings of Democracy in the US, Italy, and South Korea

In an era of global democratic backsliding and growing public discontent with democratic governance, understanding how ordinary citizens conceptualize and understand democracy across different cultural contexts has become increasingly crucial. This dissertation examines how laypeople understand democracy and how these understandings relate to their support for and satisfaction with democracy across three socio-political contexts: the United States, Italy, and South Korea. To capture the diverse ways in which citizens understand democracy, I develop and validate two novel scales: the Democratic Elements Importance Scale (DEIS) and the Democratic Feature Centrality Scale (DFCS). Both scales comprise the same 20 items but differ in their focus, with the DEIS assessing the importance of various dimensions for democracy and the DFCS examining the centrality of these dimensions in defining a country as a democracy. Four dimensions emerged for both scales: Political Participation, Social-Political Equality, Social Order and Accountability, and Freedom. Utilizing these scales, as well as free association tasks, I explore how laypeople in these countries understand democracy. The findings reveal both universal elements and culturally specific nuances in democratic understandings. Additionally, the results indicate some consistency across countries in the factors predicting support for democracy, but greater variability in the factors associated with satisfaction, highlighting the influence of unique socio-political contexts on citizens’ evaluations of their democratic systems. This dissertation contributes to the field by providing novel tools for measuring democratic understandings and offering insights into the complex relationships between these understandings and democratic attitudes. The findings underline the necessity of recognizing diverse democratic frameworks and adapting democratic practices to better align with citizen perceptions in various cultural contexts.