Bibliograph

Democracy's meanings, how the public understands democracy and why it matters, Nicholas T. Davis, Keith Gåddie, and Kirby Goidel

Type

Label

Democracy's meanings, how the public understands democracy and why it matters, Nicholas T. Davis, Keith Gåddie, and Kirby Goidel

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-223) and index

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Democracy's meanings

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

1266359658

Responsibility statement

Nicholas T. Davis, Keith Gåddie, and Kirby Goidel

Sub title

how the public understands democracy and why it matters

Summary

"Democracy's Meanings challenges conventional wisdom about how the public thinks about and evaluates democracy. Mining both political theory and over 75 years of public opinion data, the book argues that Americans think about democracy in ways that go beyond voting or elected representation. Instead, citizens have rich and substantive views about the material conditions that democracy should produce, which draw from their beliefs about equality, fairness, and justice. Using survey data collected over several years, the authors construct a typology of views about democracy. Procedural views of democracy take a minimalistic quality. While voting and fair treatment are important to this vision of democracy, ideas about equality are mostly limited to civil liberties. In contrast, social views of democracy incorporate both civil and economic equality; according to people with these views, democracy ought to meet the basic social and material needs of citizens. Complementing these two groups are moderate and indifferent views about democracy. While moderate views sit somewhere in between procedural and social perspectives regarding the role of democracy in producing social and economic equality, indifferent views of democracy involve disaffection toward it. For a small group of apathetic citizens, democracy is an ambiguous and ill-defined concept."--, Provided by publisher

Table Of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. What is democracy? : definitions and scholarly disagreements -- Chapter 3. Polling the public about democracy -- Chapter 4. Creating and validating a typology of democratic meanings -- Chapter 5. The correlates of the democracy typology -- Chapter 6. Compromise and representation within the democracy typology -- Chapter 7. Support for democracy -- Chapter 8. Democratic norms and the democracy typology -- Chapter 9. Conclusion

Contributor

Creator