IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/soinre/v153y2021i3d10.1007_s11205-020-02517-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Meanings of Democracy among Mass Publics

Author

Listed:
  • Nicholas T. Davis

    (University of Alabama)

  • Kirby Goidel

    (Texas A&M University)

  • Yikai Zhao

    (Texas A&M University)

Abstract

In this paper, we illustrate that composite views about democracy vary significantly within and across national populations. Using World Values Survey data, we use latent class analysis to demonstrate that composite views of democracy display only modest consensus across country contexts. Although the features of procedural democracy are widely viewed as a cornerstone of democracy, their perceived importance and the way that they interact with substantive features varies considerably across and within democratic countries. These findings encourage caution when analyzing cross-national mass opinion about democracy. In particular, latent variable modeling using pooled survey data should pay careful attention to the unique permutations that democracy takes in the minds of citizens.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas T. Davis & Kirby Goidel & Yikai Zhao, 2021. "The Meanings of Democracy among Mass Publics," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 849-921, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:153:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-020-02517-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s11205-020-02517-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-020-02517-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11205-020-02517-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jannes Jacobsen & Lukas Marian Fuchs, 2020. "Can We Compare Conceptions of Democracy in Cross-Linguistic and Cross-National Research? Evidence from a Random Sample of Refugees in Germany," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 151(2), pages 669-690, September.
    2. Jacobsen, Jannes & Fuchs, Lukas Marian, 2020. "Can We Compare Conceptions of Democracy in Cross-Linguistic and Cross-National Research? : Evidence from a Random Sample of Refugees in Germany," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 151(2), pages 669-690.
    3. Gal Ariely & Eldad Davidov, 2011. "Can we Rate Public Support for Democracy in a Comparable Way? Cross-National Equivalence of Democratic Attitudes in the World Value Survey," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 104(2), pages 271-286, November.
    4. repec:cup:apsrev:v:98:y:2004:i:01:p:191-207_00 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Gal Ariely, 2015. "Democracy-Assessment in Cross-National Surveys: A Critical Examination of How People Evaluate Their Regime," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 121(3), pages 621-635, April.
    6. Linzer, Drew A. & Lewis, Jeffrey B., 2011. "poLCA: An R Package for Polytomous Variable Latent Class Analysis," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 42(i10).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jennifer Oser & Marc Hooghe & Zsuzsa Bakk & Roberto Mari, 2023. "Changing citizenship norms among adolescents, 1999-2009-2016: A two-step latent class approach with measurement equivalence testing," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(5), pages 4915-4933, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kai-Ping Huang, 2023. "Support for Democracy in the Age of Rising Inequality and Population Aging," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 27-51, February.
    2. Jacobsen Jannes & Krieger Magdalena & Schikora Felicitas & Schupp Jürgen, 2021. "Growing Potentials for Migration Research using the German Socio-Economic Panel Study," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 241(4), pages 527-549, August.
    3. Mario Quaranta, 2018. "The Meaning of Democracy to Citizens Across European Countries and the Factors Involved," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 136(3), pages 859-880, April.
    4. Adrian O’Hagan & Arthur White, 2019. "Improved model-based clustering performance using Bayesian initialization averaging," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 201-231, March.
    5. Aline Riboli Marasca & Maurício Scopel Hoffmann & Anelise Reis Gaya & Denise Ruschel Bandeira, 2021. "Subjective Well-Being and Psychopathology Symptoms: Mental Health Profiles and their Relations with Academic Achievement in Brazilian Children," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 14(3), pages 1121-1137, June.
    6. Lisa Blaydes, 2023. "Assessing the Labor Conditions of Migrant Domestic Workers in the Arab Gulf States," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 76(4), pages 724-747, August.
    7. Jindřich Špička & Zdeňka Náglová, 2022. "Consumer segmentation in the meat market - The case study of Czech Republic," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 68(2), pages 68-77.
    8. Carter, Virginia & Derudder, Ben & Henríquez, Cristián, 2021. "Assessing local governments’ perception of the potential implementation of biophilic urbanism in Chile: A latent class approach," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    9. Kotzur, Patrick F. & Veit, Susanne & Namyslo, Annika & Holthausen, Mirka-Alicia & Wagner, Ulrich & Yemane, Ruta, 2020. "‘Society thinks they are cold and/or incompetent, but I do not’: Stereotype content ratings depend on instructions and the social group's location in the stereotype content space," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 59(4), pages 1018-1042.
    10. Arjan S. Gosal & Janine A. McMahon & Katharine M. Bowgen & Catherine H. Hoppe & Guy Ziv, 2021. "Identifying and Mapping Groups of Protected Area Visitors by Environmental Awareness," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-14, May.
    11. Assem Abu Hatab & Padmaja Ravula & Swamikannu Nedumaran & Carl-Johan Lagerkvist, 2022. "Perceptions of the impacts of urban sprawl among urban and peri-urban dwellers of Hyderabad, India: a Latent class clustering analysis," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(11), pages 12787-12812, November.
    12. Martin Eling & David Pankoke, 2016. "Costs and Benefits of Financial Regulation: An Empirical Assessment for Insurance Companies," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 41(4), pages 529-554, October.
    13. Sunil Kumar & Zakir Husain & Diganta Mukherjee, 2015. "Assessing Consistency of Consumer Confidence Data using Dynamic Latent Class Analysis," Papers 1509.01215, arXiv.org.
    14. Odelia Oshri & Tamir Sheafer & Shaul R Shenhav, 2016. "A community of values: Democratic identity formation in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 17(1), pages 114-137, March.
    15. Lorena Charrier & Paola Berchialla & Paola Dalmasso & Alberto Borraccino & Patrizia Lemma & Franco Cavallo, 2019. "Cigarette Smoking and Multiple Health Risk Behaviors: A Latent Class Regression Model to Identify a Profile of Young Adolescents," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(8), pages 1771-1782, August.
    16. Raphaela Grafiadeli & Heide Glaesmer & Birgit Wagner, 2022. "Loss-Related Characteristics and Symptoms of Depression, Prolonged Grief, and Posttraumatic Stress Following Suicide Bereavement," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(16), pages 1-10, August.
    17. Daniel L. Oberski, 2016. "A Review of Latent Variable Modeling With R," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 41(2), pages 226-233, April.
    18. Guangchao Feng, 2014. "Estimating intercoder reliability: a structural equation modeling approach," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 2355-2369, July.
    19. Giorgio Eduardo Montanari & Marco Doretti & Maria Francesca Marino, 2022. "Model-based two-way clustering of second-level units in ordinal multilevel latent Markov models," Advances in Data Analysis and Classification, Springer;German Classification Society - Gesellschaft für Klassifikation (GfKl);Japanese Classification Society (JCS);Classification and Data Analysis Group of the Italian Statistical Society (CLADAG);International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS), vol. 16(2), pages 457-485, June.
    20. Bradley D. Custer & Hope O. Akaeze, 2021. "A Typology of State Financial Aid Grant Programs Using Latent Class Analysis," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 62(2), pages 175-205, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:153:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-020-02517-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.