In the name of democracy: Composition, variation, and measurement of conceptions of democracy

In what ways do conceptions of democracy differ among Americans? Even though much of the empirical literature in political science seems to assume a singular conception of democracy, ordinary Americans differ in how they conceive of what democracy is. Both the participants of the January 6th Attack on the Capitol and the general public point to “saving democracy” as a driving motivation, but they exhibit drastically different behaviors. In this dissertation, I conduct a comprehensive investigation of Americans’ conceptions of democracy. I first develop a theoretical framework to examine how individuals conceptualize democracy and how these conceptions relate to political behavior. I then test and apply this framework using two empirical approaches. In Chapter 4, I employ mixed-methods analysis to explore variation in democratic conceptions among a small group of study participants. In Chapter 5, I use latent class analysis on an original, state-level representative survey of the American public (N = 25,902). In Chapter 6, I examine the factors driving these conceptual differences, identifying the demographic and attitudinal traits associated with particular understandings of democracy. In Chapter 7, I test the relationship between individuals’ conceptions of democracy and various political attitudes and find that, even after controlling for major demographic variables, variations in conceptions of democracy are strongly correlated with variations in political attitudes. The results show that 1) five different conceptions of democracy compete within the American public, 2) the division cuts across traditional sociopolitical cleavages, 3) certain conceptions deviate from the more conventionally accepted understandings of democracy, and 4) the variations in conceptions of democracy are highly correlated with variations in political attitudes. These findings suggest that democracy is understood as a multidimensional concept and that people hold distinct and sometimes contradicting composite conceptions of democracy. Furthermore, they imply that conflicting conceptions of democracy may help explain the conflicting attitudes of small-d democrats in the United States.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Political Science

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Ahn, Seongjoon

Contributors dc:contributor

• Althaus, Scott
• Mondak, Jeffery J
• Canache, Damarys Josefina
• Miller, Benjamin

• democracy
• public opinion
• american
• measurement
• democratic theory

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Seongjoon Ahn

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129721

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F129721