Studying meanings of democracy empirically on the macro level

Abstract

This panel aims to discuss various approaches used to study different meanings of democracy on the macro level, e.g. across democratic regimes at the level of the nation state, sub-national polities, and supranational orders. The recent literature on democratic regression and backsliding shows, on the one hand, growing challenges towards liberal democracy by other conceptions of democracy like direct, populist, or authoritarian ones. On the other hand, the level of support and strength of these different meanings of democracy differs greatly between democratic regimes and inside of democratic states regarding different subnational entities and regions. For example, in Scandinavia, a particular strength of solidarity and egalitarianism in the sense of a social, republican understanding of democracy is identified, while in Southern Europe, great skepticism towards the state and institutions creates a completely different image of democracy. In Southeast Asian democracies, the tradition of Confucian thought still more or less influences the understanding of democracy today, which combines collectivism and a desire for harmony with a willingness to perform and a belief in authority. In other cases, such as in Hungary, a Christian, more communitarian idea is being developed as a counter-model to liberal democracy. In Germany, there are differences in the support for liberal democracy or varying conceptions of the welfare state between East and West. These are all examples of different classifications of the prevailing understanding of democracy at the macro level, which are, however, strongly dependent on measurement instruments. Furthermore, results based on deductive approaches with theoretically conclusive and coherent notions of democracy sometimes contradict the empirical multidimensionality of collective understandings of democracy. Possible questions to be raised and analyzed in this panel could have one of the following research focuses regarding meanings of democracy on the macro level: ▪️ How and why are meanings of democracy varying in time and between different democratic regimes? ▪️ (How) can possible findings explain democratic erosion, regression or backsliding? ▪️ Does it even make sense to compare concepts of democracy as a collective macro-characteristic of democratic states? What significance do sub-national units and regions have? ▪️ Which methods can produce valid results for investigating collective meanings of democracy? ▪️ What is the relationship between deductive concepts and the empirical ambiguity of the results? How can the meanings of democracy in contemporary democracies be theoretically classified? These and other related questions the analysis of empirical meanings of democracy should be studied in this panel from different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Theoretical considerations as well as empirical analysis, one-case as well as large-n studies are welcome. All proposals should contribute to describing and explaining meanings of democracy at the macro-level and locate their results in the ongoing scientific debate about the crisis and future of democracy (research).

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