Democracy in the people’s eyes

Abstract

Meanings of democracy are contested and multifaceted, and democracy is practiced and perceived differently in different contexts. While people often use the term democracy to describe the institutions of liberal democracy, what democratic capabilities they learn and how they practice democracy across different day-to-day contexts, whether in schools, the workplace, their neighbourhoods vary greatly and can help us reimagine and deepen our democratic institutions from the bottom-up. Understanding these different perspectives on democracy requires a broad set of creative methods. This panel invites studies that analyze how people make sense of democracy in complex terms, with innovative approaches and in different contexts and forms, bringing into conversation bottom-up approaches for studying democracy that use quantitative, qualitative and/ or creative methods.

Title	Details
Social conflicts meet subjective deprivation: The complex determinants of democratic preferences	View Paper Details
Make (digital) space for the young: youth-led participation in policymaking	View Paper Details
More diverse than previously thought: Identifying political process preference types among citizens from 9 European countries	View Paper Details
Democratic innovations in a context of extensive direct democracy: results from a survey experiment on citizens’ perceptions of mini-publics in Switzerland	View Paper Details
Citizen imaginations of democracy	View Paper Details