Democratic Profiles Compared?: Comparing democratic profiles between the majority and Muslim minority population in Belgium

With the debate about multiculturalism being increasingly characterized by mutual radicalization, stigmatizing, distorted representations of Muslims have come to the forefront. Within this discourse, it is often argued that Muslim’s commitment to Islam erodes their support for liberal democracy. This also seems to have affected public opinion, as studies show that a substantial part of the majority population in Western European countries shares concerns about the effect of Islam on democratic values. To counter the bloating effect of these radical narratives, it becomes crucial to get an accurate picture of the actual level of support for liberal democratic principles among Muslim majorities. Moreover, this support should be compared to the majority population, as one can otherwise not make a suitable comparison. However, studies measuring public support of democratic principles, especially those researching minorities, tend to use limited measures. If concrete democratic rights and values are even measured, they are often either analyzed separately or combined into a common scale. The general assumption in these measures is that liberal democracy is a one-dimensional concept and that citizens will either accept or reject these norms in a consistent way. However, because of the inherently conflictual nature between different elements of liberal democracy, most importantly between majority rule and constitutional constraints, we argue that these approaches are unfit for capturing how individuals understand democracy. Rather than approaching liberal democratic support as a unidimensional concept, this paper will use a person-centered approach to provide a more nuanced picture of how people combine support for different democratic principles into a consistent belief system. Using the Belgian National Election Studies of 2019 for the majority population and the Belgian Minority Election Studies of 2019 for the minority population, this study will systematically test and compare to what extent to which majority members and Muslim minority members in Belgium endorse principles of majority rule and constitutional rights. This paper will follow a three-step approach. To get an accurate picture of the different democratic profiles, it will start with a descriptive approach, systematically comparing support for several core indicators of liberal democracy, including indicators for individual freedom (freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association) and indicators for political equality (equal rights for homosexuals and immigrants). Then, this project will make use of Multiple-Group Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to distinguish different democratic profiles within both the majority and Muslim minority populations in Belgium. The main aim of this study is to compare the LCA models for the majority and minority populations, allowing us to compare the latent structure of the democratic profiles between the two groups. Through a comparison of the cluster analysis between the majority and the minority population, this study aims to more consistently map out which liberal democratic values are the most under pressure among both groups.