The Meaning of Democracy to Citizens Across European Countries and the Factors Involved

What do citizens think democracy is and what factors contribute to its meaning? Previous works onthe public understanding of democracy have shown that, overall, citizens see democracy in “minimal”terms. However, advanced democracies are complex and encompass several elements other than electionsand freedoms. This article uses the European Social Survey module “Europeans’ understandings andevaluations of democracy” and multilevel item response theory models to build a measure of the meaningof democracy in terms of multiple attributes and to account for individual- and country-level variation.The findings show that the meaning of democracy can be seen as a continuum, and that middle-agededucated men who are interested in politics, have extreme ideological positions, and are engaged in civicorganizations include more elements in their idea of democracy, and that the cross-country variation inthe meaning of democracy mostly depends on democratic performance.