Democratic Ideals and Levels of Political Participation: The Role of Political and Social Conceptualizations of Democracy

Concerns about democratic legitimacy in contemporary democracies have brought new urgency to the question of how citizens’ attitudes and ideals have an effect on their political activity. In light of the economic downturn since 2008, an important topic of investigation is how citizens’ attitudes toward democracy influence their patterns and levels of political participation. While some authors have proposed that the choice to refrain from political activity may be related to ‘healthy’ critiques of democracy, only scarce data have been available to probe in-depth citizens’ conceptions of democracy at a cross-national level. In this paper we contribute to this debate by analyzing the relationship between citizens’ democratic ideals and political behavior in the European Social Survey’s 2012 uniquely extensive battery of questions on citizens’ conceptions of democracy in 29 countries (n=54,673). Using latent class analysis, we identify two groups of citizens who emphasize different citizenship concepts as discussed in the seminal work of T.H. Marshall, namely the importance of a political rights conception of democracy, versus a social rights conception. In subsequent multilevel regression analyses, the findings indicate that those who emphasize a social rights vision of democracy tend to have high levels of non-institutionalized political participation, but are less involved in institutionalized forms of participation. In contrast, those who emphasize a political rights vision are more active on every form of participation. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of the recent economic downturn and austerity measures in European countries.