EBP 2: Democracy Misunderstood: Authoritarian Notions of Democracy around the Globe

Paradox of democracy: Widespread support for democracy co-exists with a lack of democracy in a regime, making people's regime preferences a bad indicator of the political scene in their nation. It would be going quite far to say that this is because the opinion of the masses has no bearing on what regime succeeds. What is much more likely is that where there is strong support for democracy in a non-democratic regime, the understanding of what democracy is has been "twisted into an authoritarian direction. This would mean that people's support of democracy would not be in denial of support for the authoritarian regime they are in.

People around the world exhibit "authoritarian notions of democracy" (ANDs). Studies showed that people knew democracies had free and fair elections, allowed basic freedoms, and were generally liberal, however when faced with examples of anti-liberal ANDs, the previous understanding was lost and all was lumped together.

-Possible explanations of ANDs

ANDs stem from the spread of misinformation, surfacing in less developed countries and those without histories of democratic rule. Naturally, having generations grow up in democratic regimes lessens the risk of the spread of authoritarian misstatement of democratic values. Higher education empowers people with intellectual autonomy, also lessening the likelihood of naturalisation into ANDs as people are not as easily manipulated by authoritarian rhetoric. A third theory is that violence causes fear which pushes authoritarian messages, so ANDs are prevalent in countries facing widespread violence. Another approach highlights the history of religion in "indoctrinating people with an uncritical belief in authority", where religious people "tend to hold conservative, patriarchal and authoritarian beliefs". These explanations do not have to be mutually exclusive, it would make sense if they were found together. Some aspects will be more influential than others, and they can be singled out.

-Testing of these theories

Studies were taken out asking people from various places around the world if specific situations were characteristics of democratic regimes. There was support for both ANDs and Liberal Notions of Democracy as being democratic, however there was more uncertainty over the ANDs as most people could recognise the LNDs as democratic properties. High levels of people believing their country is more democratic than it is was correlated to support of the AND statements, while a lower presence of ANDs is a better indicator of an understanding of democracy than a high presence of LNDs. It found that a majority of people who supported ANDs expressed a preference for democratic regimes over authoritarian rule. So the correlation between supporting ANDs and supporting authoritarian regimes is low.

The studies affirmed the theory that those countries with support for ANDs are developing and have non-democratic regimes. They also affirmed that where there are strong 'enlightenment forces' (moral liberation and cognitive mobilisation) there is less support for ANDs, which can substitute for short democratic traditions.

-Implications

Enlightenment forces are the most important factor in lowering the prevalence of ANDs, while individual religiousity and fear of violence enhance ANDs, leaving all other influences are negligible in the scheme of things. It can be said that those enhancing forces limit enlightenment forces in countries, showing a clear correlation between the prevalence of each alongside ANDs. There was a dominance of country wide influences over individual influences which shows that ANDs are national mentalities. The democratic paradox is resolved by these findings, the existence of ANDs explains why there is significant support for democracy in non-democratic regimes; people misunderstand their regime as being more democratic than it actually is. This is as opposed to the alternative theory which suggests support of ANDs as being democratic were false representations of people's views to safeguard themselves from state sanction in strict regimes. So people who purport to support democracy while agreeing with ANDs show that they actually support authoritarian values. Those who are avoiding showing their true beliefs were more likely the people who refused to respond to certain questions in the studies.

-Discussion

The most important understanding gained from these studies is that enlightenment forces are the key to disabling authoritarian notions of democracy. This links to our discussions in class about censorship, as where the is limited access to empowering information people are more easily indoctrinated into the regime and its values. If people cannot get themselves higher education they are susceptible to believing the messages being forced on them by authoritative figures. In places like China where things like important national historical accounts are being blocked from the country's internet it would be understandable that ANDs would be prevalent.

This piece is a, self-declared, first of its kind study of authoritarian notions of democracy, attempting to explain how they happen, and what they show about international political regimes. Very detailed graphs and explanations were given of the research and its outcomes, and research was done in different countries with differing regimes to get a representative cross-section of the international society. The article attempted to discredit under-researched explanations for ANDs and replace the misinformation with research based answers;  I would consider it was successful in its aim.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317332977_Democracy_Misunderstood_Authoritarian_Notions_of_Democracy_around_the_Globe