Paradigms of Democracy Research - Bring the people back to the heart of democracy research

The research problem that leads us to reflect on paradigms of democracy research is the discrepancy between the fundamental support for the idea of democracy and the dissatisfaction with the existing democracies. So, although the population's support for democracy is at a consistently high level, more and more people are dissatisfied with democracy. In our view, this primarily raises the question of which concepts of democracy are behind the evaluation of democracy and whether these concepts can be used to identify the reform potential of our current democracy. Our approach to this initial question is whether, the current democratic crisis is mainly due to the institutional state of the political system, that is institutions and processes, or whether the democratic crisis also has to do with the sensitivities, mentalities and attitudes of the population who are estranged from the democratic system. Democracy, in the form in which it is currently institutionalized, is perceived as dysfunctional in the face of rapid socio-economic change and various crisis. However, as the population's understanding of democracy, by which they evaluate current democracy, has not yet been in the focus of "crisis research“. The discrepancy between the population's understanding of democracy and the current state of democracy only becomes clear when the attitudes of the population are expressed in political behavior and can no longer be ignored as a rejection of (the liberal-procedural) democracy and its institutions and actors. The supply side of the democratic crisis has been very well studied in the tradition of democracy research and research on democracy promotion. The demand side, that is the attitudes and behavior of the population, which are based on people's actual understanding of democracy, is far less researched. However, by focusing on how people understand democracy in different ways, and on the consequences of these different understandings on their attitudes and behavior, we can uncover the micro-foundations of the current crisis of democracy, which have so far been considered mainly at the macro level. If we want to discuss the crisis of democracy, we cannot avoid dealing with the reference models behind the (crisis) judgment. We argue, that this requires a permanent empirical, but also theoretical openness to how the understanding of democracy is changing, not only among democracy researchers themselves, but also among the population. Therefore, we will argue in this paper for an opening up of the current paradigm of democracy, which consists of stepping back behind the institutions of democracy and asking what purpose they serve. What is the basic principle of all democracies, regardless of their type and form? Further we will briefly introduce a conceptual approach, which will give an idea how this step could be possible.