Democracy research must evolve. Citizens support democracy itself, but are growing disillusioned with democratic institutions. Norma Osterberg-Kaufmann and Christoph Mohamad-Klotzbach say we need to rethink our frameworks. Here, they argue for broadening the empirical paradigm – shifting focus from procedural checklists to people’s own understandings of democracy – to better grasp today’s crisis
Contemporary democracy research faces a pressing challenge: how should it respond to the growing gap between citizens’ widespread support for the idea of democracy and their deepening dissatisfaction with its practice? Around the world, citizens profess allegiance to democracy, yet trust in democratic institutions is eroding. Elections happen, parties compete, parliaments legislate.
Still, people feel unheard, unseen, unrepresented. This discontent raises a central question: what concept of democracy underlies both our evaluations and measurements of democracy? Is the crisis merely institutional or also mental, cultural, and emotional?
We argue that the crisis of democracy reflects more than failing institutions. It reflects a mismatch between how democracy is currently structured and how people understand and experience it. To confront this, we need to revisit the assumptions driving democracy research itself.
Thomas Kuhn famously defined paradigms as shared frameworks of theories, values, and methods that guide normal science. Paradigm shifts occur when anomalies accumulate – when the dominant framework can no longer explain the world it is meant to describe.
In democracy research, a similar situation is emerging. Much of the field still operates within a narrow liberal-procedural paradigm. Elections, formal institutions, and state structures dominate empirical studies of democracy but they still fail in their task. Why?
Elections, formal institutions, and state structures dominate empirical studies of democracy but they still fail in their task. Why?
Empirical democracy research tends to treat democracy as a fixed institutional structure. Most democracy indices, such as Freedom House, Polity, or V-Dem derive their indicators from liberal Western political theory. They focus heavily on the supply side: elections mainly, additional rule of law, institutional checks and balances. These are seen as universal benchmarks.
Yet this deductive approach often assumes a global consensus around one model of democracy, which Robert Dahl termed 'polyarchy'. Polyarchy sidelines alternative understandings of democracy, and limits engagement with how democracy is perceived and practiced by different populations.
While supply-side measures dominate, the demand side – how people understand and evaluate democracy – remains under-researched. Major surveys like the World Values Survey or regional barometers include questions on democratic attitudes, but they often embed polyarchic assumptions. They test support for democracy/polyarchy as defined in the West, rather than exploring how democracy is imagined elsewhere.
To understand the democratic crisis, we must understand how people define democracy. Citizens may reject current democratic institutions not because they oppose democracy, but because these institutions fail to reflect their democratic expectations.
Rather than advocating for a complete paradigm shift, we propose opening the current paradigm to a wider array of perspectives. This means moving beyond a one-size-fits-all model and embracing democracy as a contested concept.
Instead of measuring democracy solely through institutional design, we should examine the principles democracy is meant to serve
Instead of measuring democracy solely through institutional design, we should examine the principles democracy is meant to serve. What is the core purpose of democracy – globally, and across cultures? And how can different institutional forms realise this purpose?
This approach allows us to connect empirical democracy research more directly with comparative democratic theory. It broadens the lens beyond polyarchy to include traditions like republicanism, communitarianism, or indigenous governance models. It also invites us to look beyond the country-state: to local assemblies, citizen juries, expert councils, or other non-state democratic practices.
Opening the paradigm has major implications for comparative research. It shifts the focus from asking, 'Does this country have free and fair elections?' to asking, 'How do people here understand democracy? What principles matter to them? And do their institutions reflect these principles?'
This dual perspective – bottom-up and top-down – can help generate a more global and pluralistic concept of democracy. We propose a cyclical framework. By starting from individual-level data (citizens’ understandings of democracy), we can inductively build a concept of democracy. We can then compare the result with theoretical traditions and re-test it through deductive surveys. The cycle ensures that both normative ideals and empirical realities inform our understanding.
Such an approach enables us to assess not only the presence of democratic institutions but their quality and legitimacy on the ground, for the people they concern. Do current institutions fulfil the core democratic principles people care about? If not, reform may be needed – not to abandon democracy, but to bring it closer to what people expect from it.
This shift also affects how we distinguish democracy from autocracy. Rather than ticking off institutional checklists, we can ask whether the core principles of democracy are being fulfilled, however they are institutionalised. This helps us, for example, to better understand why democratic backsliding can occur in democratic regimes and why it is accepted by parts of the electorate who vote for populist-authoritarian leaders or parties.
Opening the paradigm has broader socio-political implications. If comparative democracy research moves beyond Western-centric models, it can foster an inclusive, global dialogue about democracy’s future. Ideas developed in non-Western contexts could revitalise democracy in the West itself.
If comparative democracy research moves beyond Western-centric models, it can foster an inclusive, global dialogue about democracy’s future
Of course, this is not without risks. The erosion of polyarchy may raise concerns about democratic backsliding. But ignoring alternative visions only deepens the disconnect between theory and lived experience. What’s needed is critical reflection, not defensiveness.
The democratic crisis is not only political, but also conceptual. To understand and address it, democracy research must evolve. We do not call for a revolution in Kuhn’s sense, but for a deliberate and thoughtful opening of the empirical paradigm.
By shifting focus from institutional forms to democratic principles, we can reconnect democracy research with the people it ultimately serves. This makes comparative democracy research more relevant, more responsive – and more democratic.
No.115 in a Loop thread on the Science of Democracy. Look out for the 🦋 to read more
