Suchergebnisse

In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have made serious efforts to analyse how differently or similarly citizens of new and advanced democracies understand democracy. Unlike those research endeavours, this study attempts to evaluate how well or poorly global citizens are informed about democracy. Analysing the latest wave of the World Values Surveys, it demonstrates that the proportion of those well informed about democracy varies considerably across countries and within the population of each country. The well informed are most numerous among politically attentive citizens living especially in economically and democratically developed countries. This finding does not confirm the recently popular thesis of global democratisation that democratic political culture can emerge in any type of society within a relatively short period of time. Instead, it supports the long-standing Almond-Verba model of civic culture, which links cultural democratisation with socio-economic and political modernisation over an extended period of time. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThis study analyzed public opinion data for the 45 societies from the latest World Values Survey and found that Internet use promotes democratic support in democratic countries but not in authoritarian countries. In advanced democracies, democratic ideas and thoughts are freely produced and disseminated in cyberspace, and Internet users tend to absorb them. On the other hand, this online content is highly controlled by authoritarian governments in non-democratic settings, and Internet users are likely to be exposed to pro-government messages and entertainment, thereby nullifying the democratic utility of Internet use. These different social learning processes result in a global reinforcement effect of Internet use on democratic support. The results confirm that the Internet is a neutral technology and its effect depends on the political environment where it is used.

Scholars of democratization have developed a variety of theories to explain national and cross-national differences in democratic support. These theories, however, pay little attention to the cognitive origin of democratic support. This study seeks to examine how informed understanding about democracy affects such support. To this end, it applies theories of institutional legitimacy and social learning and predicts that the relationship between citizen understanding of and support for democracy is not only positively concaved but also dependent on the historical experience of democracy. An analysis of the World Values Survey 2005–2008 reveals strong evidence to support the theoretical predications.

How do mass citizens understand democracy? Are they capable of distinguishing it from its non-democratic alternatives? Does their understanding about democracy matter? To reveal the contours of cultural democratization in South Korea, this article addresses these questions largely overlooked in earlier survey-based studies. Analyses of the 2010 Korea Barometer survey indicate that all segments of the Korean electorate, including the young and the college-educated, are neither accurately nor fully informed about what distinguishes a democratic regime from its non-democratic alternatives. Moreover, the study provides strong evidence of democratic learning in that an increase in democratic knowledge leads to committed support for democracy. The findings together imply an urgent need to improve the quality of civic education for the development of democratic political culture in Korea and new democracies. Adapted from the source document.

In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have made serious efforts to analyse how differently or similarly citizens of new and advanced democracies understand democracy. Unlike those research endeavours, this study attempts to evaluate how well or poorly global citizens are informed about democracy. Analysing the latest wave of the World Values Surveys, it demonstrates that the proportion of those well informed about democracy varies considerably across countries and within the population of each country. The well informed are most numerous among politically attentive citizens living especially in economically and democratically developed countries. This finding does not confirm the recently popular thesis of global democratisation that democratic political culture can emerge in any type of society within a relatively short period of time. Instead, it supports the long-standing Almond-Verba model of civic culture, which links cultural democratisation with socio-economic and political modernisation over an extended period of time.

Democracy is political model with global appeal, but little is known about how contemporary publics understand it. Are East Asians capable of defining democracy in their own words? Are they also capable of prioritizing its properties? Do they tend to understand it procedurally or substantively? This paper addresses these questions by analyzing responses to the open-ended and closed-ended questions that the second round of the East Asia Barometer surveys asked in nine countries in 2006 and 2007. Results of this analysis confirm that most people in East Asia are cognitively capable of defining democracy. Contrary to what is known in the literature, however, the majority of East Asians do not equate democracy exclusively with political freedom. This finding leads to the conclusion that the prevalence of substantive or communitarian conceptions of democracy is one important characteristic of the cultural democratization unfolding in East Asia.