What Do Americans Think Democracy Means?

• In Event: Poster Session: Public Policy Preferences and Attitudes toward Democracy & European Politics and Society
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Public Policy Preferences and Attitudes toward Democracy

Abstract

Research on how Americans think about democracy primarily uses surveys and quantitative methods, but these studies rely on researchers’ assumptions about democracy and do not ask about how people understand democracy based on their own experiences and on their own terms. In this study, I apply an interpretive method to investigate what Americans think democracy means and how they make sense of it in their everyday lives. I conducted semi-structured conversations among 11 self-forming groups across three regions in Virginia in June and July of 2023. I did not observe a consensus or clear typology of democratic meanings across the 11 conversations. Participants discussed diverse and complex meanings of democracy which the current survey literature does not capture. I also observed that participants’ democratic meanings were not isolated or readily retrievable. Rather, participants constructed democratic meanings using conceptual tools that allowed them to talk about democracy in relation to their broader values and worldviews. My findings suggest that existing survey methods on this topic may not accurately capture how people understand democracy. Future research on how people think about democracy should use methods that center on people’s own experiences and understandings, rather than scholars’ definitions of democracy.

Author

• Christina Zemong Wang, Duke University