Illiberal, populist, and “inconsistent” democrats: A cross-national analysis of EU citizens’ conceptions of democracy

During the last decade, in face of the growth of illiberal actors within the European Union and beyond (e.g., Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018; Lührmann and Lindberg 2019), a growing body of empirical research investigated the correlates and the likely consequences of European citizens’ conceptions of democracy. Existing research has shown the fundamental heterogeneity of individual attitudes toward the contested and slippery notion of democracy. While part of this heterogeneity is clearly related to the fragmentation of this research field in terms of conceptual frameworks and empirical strategies (König et al. 2022), previous research has shown a general support for the key tenets of liberal democracy by EU citizens (e.g., Kriesi et al. 2016). Nonetheless, other research efforts have also shown how EU citizens might favour democracy in different guises – such as technocratic, populist, and illiberal ones (e.g., Hibbing et al. 2021; Pilet et al. 2023). More recent investigations have also provided robust evidence about how individual conceptions of democracy are rarely consistent (e.g., van der Brug et al. 2021), with varying patterns of conflicting views (e.g., Bertsou and Caramani 2020; Fernández et al. 2022; König 2022; Schedler and Sarsfield 2007). By building on a procedural and minimal conception of liberal democracy (e.g., Dahl 1971, 1998) this study aims to investigate both the contextual and individual correlates of illiberal, populist, and mixed conceptions of democracy analysing a new set of survey items introduced in the 2019 round of the European Election Study (EES) post-electoral survey (Schmitt et al. 2019) and additional data sources.