How Well are Global Citizenries Informed about Democracy? Ascertaining the Breadth and Distribution of Their Democratic Enlightenment and Its Sources

Youngho Cho

Political Studies, 2015, vol. 63, issue 1, 240-258

Abstract: type="main">

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.

Date: 2015
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