While the term 'democracy' has existed in political a and philosophical vocabularies since classical Athens, representations of democracy by laypeople are relatively more recent. Lay representations of democracy are likely to be formed, maintained and changed by both implicit and explicit processes. Some features of lay representations are deeply seated and transmitted across cultures; others are shaped by the already existing thinking schemata; and they also shape the existing thinking schemata by foregrounding particular latent issues, by bringing them into focused consciousness, and by introducing new contents. In the present study, lay representations of democracy were explored in two cultures, in Slovakia and in Scotland. It was found that the most important terms associated with 'democracy' were value terms such as 'individual freedom', 'justice' and 'individual rights'. The remaining clusters of terms expressed political processes and ideological vocabularies. It is argued in accordance with dialogical epistemology that the co-construction of meanings in study of lay representations of democracy must take into consideration different kinds of reflexive relations.
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