How Democratic Attitudes Shape Political Behaviour: A Theoretical Framework

The role of political culture is a longstanding concern for studies on democratisation and democratic consolidation. Yet despite the extensive scholarship on the linkages between democratic legitimacy beliefs in the population and regime type, the role of political culture has received surprisingly little attention in the burgeoning literature on democratic backsliding. Revisitng some of the classical debates in the field, this contribution develops a three-stage theoretical framework linking political culture to political behaviour in contexts of democracies under threat. The first stage focuses on the demand side to probe the heterogeneity of democratic attitudes and depth of liberal democratic commitment among citizens. In a second stage, I concentrate on the supply side, positing that authoritarian-leaning elites deliberately seek to mobilize alternative understandings of democracy to justify their violations of liberal democratic standards. Finally, I articulate the proposed connection between individual-level democratic attitudes and citizens’ vote choice that provides the micro-foundations for my argument relating political culture and the weakness of liberal democratic commitment to the emergence and persistence of democratic backsliding.