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Conceptions of Democracy among German and American Citizens and Political Elites

Fri, September 6, 12:00 to 1:30pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center (PCC), 202A

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

What do citizens mean by and expect from democracy? And how do their conceptions of democracy compare to those of representatives and political elites? We know that citizens have different understandings of democracy: while some hold more minimalist and liberal ones, others have participatory, deliberative or populist understandings. From these different normative conceptions of democracy, citizens derive expectations about practices, institutions and policies. Whether these expectations will be met depends, among other things, on the way in which political elites translate their own understandings of democracy into political practice and institutional design. If a large gap opens up between citizen and elite understandings of democracy, support for democracy and trust in institutions may erode, leaving the procedural consensus that democracy depends upon to crumble.

In light of the discussion about democratic retrenchment, renovation and reimagination, it seems particularly important to explore to what degree conceptions of democracy within the citizenry and between citizens and political elites still overlap or diverge. The panel seeks to provide a comparative perspective on conceptions of democracy by comparing elite and citizen attitudes in Germany and the United States. Papers in the panel draw on representative surveys and legislator surveys conducted in both countries to study citizen and elite attitudes to democracy. We thus hope to achieve a better understanding of the way in which conceptions of democracy and institutional design preferences evolve in reciprocal relationships between political elites and citizens and to map the scope and content of procedural consensus and dissent under different context conditions.

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