Explaining mixed preferences for political decision-making: Evidence from Germany

In recent decades increasing attention is dedicated in the literature to citizens’ preferences for alternative models of political decision-making. Most of these studies either tried to describe these preferences or to link them with political behavior. In doing so, existing research often focused on citizens with clear preferences and only marginally referred to those individuals with mixed or unclear preferences (mostly as a point of reference). To date it remains unclear who these citizens are why they display mixed preferences. To address this void in the literature, our paper investigates the determinants of mixed preferences for models of decision-making by using individual-level data from a survey conducted in autumn 2014 on a probability representative sample in Germany. The survey answers indicate that almost one quarter of the respondents (approximately 700) have a mixed preference for models of decision-making, while the rest clearly favor representative, citizen-oriented or expert democracy. Our paper tests the extent to which interest in politics, media consumption, civic engagement, and socio-demographic variables can explain the mixed against the clear preference for a model of decision-making.