Democratic Models and Authoritarian Legacies: Understanding Citizens’ Democratic Values Across Europe

How do citizens across Europe perceive democracy more than 20 years after the fall of the iron curtain? While the importance of political cuIture and citizens' support for democratization has long been acknoledged, the long-term impact of authoritarian legacies on citizens in new democracies is less studied. Similarly, little is known about the impact of different democratic institutional designs on individual attitudes. In this paper, based on the literature on varieties of democracy and authoritarian legacies, I suppose that individual expectations from democracy differ across countries, and that they are influenced by two factors: Authoritarian legacies and the prevalent democratic model. Specifically, I assume that due to socialization and democratic learning, individuals acquire democratic preferences based on the experiences they make in different regimes. Using individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 6 as well as country-level data from the Democracy Barometer, I test how the national democratic and authoritarian legacies in 27 European countries influence individual democratic ideals. Indeed, I find evidence for both socialization and participation effects of the democratic context on citizens’ democratic values. Further, authoritarian legacies still matter largely for the political culture, as democratic values differ substantially in former communist countries: Citizens tend to value output legitimacy over procedural legitimacy, and social components of democracy over liberal institutions.