Supporting democracy when other democracies prosper?

ABSTRACT

Public support has long been considered crucial for the vitality and survival of democracy. Although the determinants of citizens’ support for democracy have been extensively studied, current literature puts emphasis on domestic factors. While another body of scholarship has documented the propensity of political diffusion, most studies focus on aggregate outcomes, and citizens’ attitudes within this tendency have received less attention. Extending the research on the influence of domestic performance on public attitudes and verifying the micro-foundation underlying political diffusion, we argue that economic performance of other countries can similarly shape citizens’ support for democracy. Using a sample of more than 90 democratic countries across the globe over the past three decades, we find that citizens in democratic countries are more likely to view democracy as the ideal regime type when there is a positive correlation between the level of democracy and economic growth across proximate countries, either geographically or culturally defined. We also show that the effects of proximate foreign democracies’ economic performance in boosting democratic support are particularly evident in countries where citizens have greater access to external information, as they are more aware of the political systems and economic conditions of foreign countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Democratic support
• political diffusion
• regime legitimacy
• economic performance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 E.g., Diamond, “Democratic Regression in Comparative”; Lührmann and Lindberg, “A Third Wave of Autocratization is Here.”

2 Foa and Mounk, “The Danger of Deconsolidation”; Graham and Svolik, “Democracy in America?”; Wuttke, Gavras, and Schoen, “Have Europeans Grown Tired of Democracy?”

3 Almond and Verba, Political Culture; Claassen, “Does Public Support Help.”

4 Bilodeau, “Is Democracy the Only Game in town?”; Mishler and Rose, “Generation, Age, and Time”; Montero, Gunther, and Torcal, “Democracy in Spain”; Pop-Eleches and Tucker, Communism’s Shadow.

5 Bratton and Mattes, “Support for Democracy in Africa”; Evans and Whitefield, “The Politics and Economics of Democratic Commitment”; Hofferbert and Klingemann, “Remembering the Bad Old Days”; Magalhães, “Government Effectiveness and Support”; Mattes and Bratton, “Learning about Democracy in Africa”; Mishler and Rose, “Political Support for Incomplete Democracies.”

6 Acemoglu et al., (Successful) Democracies Breed.

7 Freyburg, “Transgovernmental Networks as an Apprenticeship in Democracy?”; Huang, “International Knowledge and Domestic”; Kern and Hainmueller, “Opium for the Masses.”

8 See Coppedge et al., “International Influence”; Goldring and Greitens, “Rethinking Democratic Diffusion” for a review.

9 Freyburg, “Transgovernmental Networks as an Apprenticeship in Democracy?”

10 Abramson and Montero, “Learning About Growth”; Miller, “Democracy by Example?”

11 Claassen, “Estimating Smooth Country”; Claassen, “Does Public Support Help.”

12 Claassen, “In the Mood for Democracy?”; Claassen and Magalhães, “Effective Government and Evaluations.”

13 E.g., Inglehart, “How Solid is Mass Support”; Mattes and Bratton, “Learning about Democracy in Africa.”

14 Lipset, “Some Social Requisites”; Claassen, “Does Public Support Help”; Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition.

15 Easton, “A Re-Assessment of the Concept”; Norris, Critical Citizens.

16 Dalton, “Political Support in Advanced”; Norris, Critical Citizens.

17 Bratton and Mattes, “Support for Democracy in Africa”; Anderson and Guillory, “Political Institutions and Satisfaction”; Blais, Morin-Chassé, and Singh, “Election Outcomes, Legislative.”

18 Dalton, “Communists and Democrats”; Acemoglu et al., (Successful) Democracies Breed; Mattes and Bratton, “Learning about Democracy in Africa.”

19 Atkinson, “Does Soft Power Matter?”; Barceló, “Are Western-Educated Leaders.”

20 Bilodeau, “Is Democracy the Only Game in town?”; Voicu and Peral, “Support for Democracy and Early.”

21 Bratton and Mattes, “Support for Democracy in Africa”; Mattes and Bratton, “Learning about Democracy in Africa”; Mishler and Rose, “What are the Origins of Political”; Evans and Whitefield, “The Politics and Economics of Democratic Commitment.”

22 Acemoglu et al., (Successful) Democracies Breed; Magalhães, “Government Effectiveness and Support”; Svolik, “Learning to Love Democracy.”

23 Neundorf, Gerschewski, and Olar, “How Do Inclusionary.”

24 Dalton, “Communists and Democrats,” 490.

25 Perez-Armendáriz and Crow, “Do Migrants Remit Democracy?”

26 Huang, “International Knowledge and Domestic.”

27 Kern and Hainmueller, “Opium for the Masses.”

28 Beissinger, “Structure and Example in Modular”; Brinks and Coppedge, “Diffusion is No Illusion”; Gleditsch and Ward, “Diffusion and the International”; Houle, Kayser, and Xiang, “Diffusion or Confusion?”; Huntington, The Third Wave.

29 Brinks and Coppedge, “Diffusion is No Illusion”; Gleditsch and Ward, “Diffusion and the International”; Houle, Kayser, and Xiang, “Diffusion or Confusion?”; Leeson and Dean, “The Democratic Domino Theory”; Goodliffe and Hawkins, “Dependence Networks and the Diffusion”; Pevehouse, “With a Little Help”; Torfason and Ingram, “The Global Rise of Democracy”; Beissinger, “Structure and Example in Modular”; Schmotz and Tansey, “Regional Autocratic Linkage”; Goldring and Greitens, “Rethinking Democratic Diffusion.”

30 Simmons, Dobbin, and Garrett, “Introduction.”

31 Levitsky and Way, “International Linkage and Democratization.”

32 Gleditsch and Ward, “Measuring Space”; Levitsky and Way, “International Linkage and Democratization”; Torfason and Ingram, “The Global Rise of Democracy.”

33 Miller, “Democracy by Example?”

34 Ibid.

35 Buera, Monge-Naranjo, and Primiceri, “Learning the Wealth of Nations.”

36 Miller, “Democracy by Example?”

37 Abramson and Montero, “Learning About Growth.”

38 Freyburg, “Transgovernmental Networks as an Apprenticeship in Democracy?”; tests how Moroccan officials’ attitudes towards democracy are influenced by their involvement in international policy networks as an exception. However, this study only focuses on elites in one authoritarian country and does not examine public attitudes.

39 Abramson and Montero, “Learning About Growth”; Miller, “Democracy by Example?”

40 Miller, “Democracy by Example?”; Goldring and Greitens, “Rethinking Democratic Diffusion.”

41 Aytaç, “Relative Economic Performance.”

42 Hale, “Regime Change Cascades”; Weyland, “The Diffusion of Revolution”; Córdova and Hiskey, “Shaping Politics at Home”; Perez-Armendáriz and Crow, “Do Migrants Remit Democracy?”; Huang, “International Knowledge and Domestic”; Kern and Hainmueller, “Opium for the Masses.”

43 Bunce and Wolchik, “International Diffusion and Postcommunist”; Levitsky and Way, “International Linkage and Democratization.”

44 Abramson and Montero, “Learning About Growth”; See note 36.

45 Córdova and Hiskey, “Shaping Politics at Home”; Huang, “International Knowledge and Domestic”; Kern and Hainmueller, “Opium for the Masses”; Perez-Armendáriz and Crow, “Do Migrants Remit Democracy?”

46 Inglehart, “How Solid is Mass Support”; Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition; Mattes and Bratton, “Learning about Democracy in Africa.”

47 Anderson and Guillory, “Political Institutions and Satisfaction.”

48 Claassen, “Estimating Smooth Country”; Claassen, “Does Public Support Help”; Claassen, “In the Mood for Democracy?”

49 Within the 11 distinct sets of survey questions, the survey projects use somewhat different wordings, resulting in a total of 61 unique survey questions. The 11 sets are listed in Table A.2. Please refer to Claassen, “Measuring Democratic Mood”; for exact wordings of all questions.

50 Robinson and Tannenberg, “Self-Censorship of Regime Support.”

51 Lührmann, Tannenberg, and Lindberg, “Regimes of the World (Row).”

52 Miller, “Democracy by Example?”

53 Ibid.

54 Bolt and Zanden, Maddison Style Estimates.

55 Houle, Kayser, and Xiang, “Diffusion or Confusion?”

56 Coppedge et al., V-Dem Codebook V11.1.

57 Dahl, Polyarchy.

58 Marshall and Gurr, “Polity 5 Project.”

59 Zhukov and Stewart, “Choosing Your Neighbors.”

60 Gleditsch and Ward, “Measuring Space.”

61 Abramson and Montero, “Learning About Growth”; See note 36.

62 Spolaore and Wacziarg, “Ancestry and Development.”

63 Ibid.

64 A direct neighbor is defined as any country that shares a border or is within 400 miles by water, based on the Correlates of War Project Direct Contiguity Data. Stinnett et al., “The Correlates of War (Cow).”

65 Houle, Kayser, and Xiang, “Diffusion or Confusion?”

66 The regions are based on the V-Dem “region” variable (e_regionpol), which divides the world into ten politico-geographic regions.

67 Krieckhaus et al., “Economic Inequality and Democratic”; Magalhães, “Government Effectiveness and Support.”

68 Mishler and Rose, “Political Support for Incomplete”; Rothstein, The Quality of Government.

69 Gapminder, “Data in Gapminder World.”

70 Houle, Kayser, and Xiang, “Diffusion or Confusion?”

71 Bermeo, “Foreign Aid and Regime”; Dietrich and Wright, “Foreign Aid Allocation.”

72 Grieg and Enterline, National Material Capabilities; Singer, “Reconstructing the Correlates of War.”

73 Claassen, “In the Mood for Democracy?”

74 Claassen and Magalhães, “Effective Government and Evaluations.”

75 Keele and Kelly, “Dynamic Models for Dynamic.”

76 Driscoll and Kraay, “Consistent Covariance Matrix.”

77 Geographically proximate countries are also more likely linked in the same cultural networks. The inverse capital distance weighted and the inverse ancestral distance weighted democracy-growth correlation measures are substantially correlated at r = .85.

78 Claassen and Magalhães, “Effective Government and Evaluations.”

79 Acemoglu et al., “Democracy Does Cause Growth”; Knutsen, “A Business Case for Democracy.”

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan: [grant no MOST 110-2628-H-006-001-MY3].

Notes on contributors

Yi-Ting Wang

Yi-Ting Wang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. Her research interests centre on democratic transitions and sustainability. Her research has been published in journals including the British Journal of Political Science, Electoral Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, Party Politics, and World Development.