Many studies have tried to identify citizens’ views about which actors should govern and how. These studies have mostly looked at support for citizens or independent experts being given a greater role. Recently, Hibbing, Theiss-Morse, Hibbing and Fortunato have proposed a new battery of 21 survey items capturing the dimensions along which citizens’ preferences for who should govern are organized. Testing their survey instrument among US respondents, they identified seven dimensions. In this study, we replicate their approach across nine European democracies, namely, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Ireland and the Netherlands. The replication allows, first, to compare citizens’ preferences for political actors between the US and Europe, and within Europe. Second, it provides suggestions for how Hibbing and colleagues’ battery might be adapted and re-used in other countries, enabling further cross-national comparative research on citizens’ preferences for who should govern.
AndersonCGoodyear-GrantE (2010) Why are highly informed citizens sceptical of referenda?Electoral Studies29(2): 227–238.
2.
BedockCPiletJ-B (2021) Peut-on réformer la démocratie? Convergences et incompatibilités dans les préférences des citoyens quant à l’organisation de la démocratie en France. In: DamayLJacquetV (eds) Les transformations de la légitimité démocratique. Louvain-la-Neuve/Paris: Academia/L’Harmattan, 275–303.
3.
BengtssonÅMattilaM (2009) Direct democracy and its critics: support for direct democracy and ‘Stealth’ democracy in Finland. West European Politics32(5): 1031–1048. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402380903065256
4.
BengtssonÅChristensenH (2016) Ideals and actions: do citizens’ patterns of political participation correspond to their conceptions of democracy?Government and Opposition51(2): 234–260.
5.
BertsouECaramaniD (2022) People haven't had enough of experts: technocratic attitudes among citizens in nine European democracies. American Journal of Political Science66(1): 5–23.
6.
BertsouE (2022) Bring in the experts? Citizen preferences for independent experts in political decision making processes. European Journal of Political Research61(1): 255–267.
7.
BoulianneS (2018) Mini-publics and public opinion: Two survey-based experiments. Political Studies66(1): 119–136.
8.
ChiruMEnyediZ (2022) Who wants technocrats? A comparative study of citizen attitudes in nine young and consolidated democracies. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations24(1): 95–112.
9.
CloseCDodeigneJHennauS, et al. (2022) A scandal effect? Local scandals and political trust. Acta Politica58: 212–236.
10.
CofféHMichelsA (2014) Education and support for representative, direct and stealth democracy. Electoral Studies35(September): 1–11. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2014.03.006
11.
DaltonRJBurklinWPDrummondA (2001) Public opinion and direct democracy. Journal of Democracy12(4): 141–153.
EsaiassonPPerssonMGilljamM, et al. (2019) Reconsidering the role of procedures for decision acceptance. British Journal of Political Science49(1): 291–314.
14.
FontJWojcieszakMNavarroCJ (2015) Participation, representation and expertise: citizen preferences for political decision-making processes. Political Studies63(S1): 153–172. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9248.12191
15.
GherghinaSGeisselB (2017) Linking democratic preferences and political participation: evidence from Germany. Political Studies65(1_suppl): 24–42.
16.
GherghinaSGeisselB (2019) An alternative to representation: explaining preferences for citizens as political decision-makers. Political Studies Review17(3): 224–238.
17.
GherghinaSGeisselB (2020) Support for direct and deliberative models of democracy in the UK: understanding the difference. Political Research Exchange2(1): 1809474.
18.
GoldbergSWyssDBächtigerA (2020) Deliberating or thinking (twice) about democratic preferences: what German citizens want from democracy. Political Studies68(2): 311–331.
19.
HarrisC (2018) Andrej Babis EU funds scandal: Czech protestors use revolution anniversary to call for PM to quit. Euronews.
20.
HibbingJRTheiss-MorseE (2002) Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs about How Government Should Work. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
21.
HibbingJRTheiss-MorseEHibbingMV, et al. (2021) Who do the people want to govern?Party Politics29: 3–15.
22.
JäskeM (2019) Participatory innovations and maxi publics: the influence of participation possibilities on perceived legitimacy at the local level in Finland. European Journal of Political Research58(2): 603–630.
LavezzoloSRamiroLFernández-VázquezP (2021) The will for reason: voter demand for experts in office. West European Politics44(7): 1506–1531.
25.
MairP (1996) Party systems and structures of competition. In: Comparing Democracies–Elections and Voting in Global Perspective. London, UK: Sage Publications.
26.
OckeyGJ (2013) Exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The Companion to Language Assessment3: 1224–1244.
27.
PiletJBBolDPaulisE, et al. (2022) Public support for citizens’ assemblies selected through sortition: survey and experimental evidence from 15 countries. European Journal of Political Research. Epub ahead of print. DOI: 10.1111/1475-6765.12541.
RametSP (ed) (2019) Orthodox Churches and Politics in Southeastern Europe: Nationalism, Conservativism, and Intolerance. London, UK: Palgrave MacMillan.
30.
RojonSRijkenAJ (2021) Referendums: increasingly unpopular among the ‘winners’ of modernization? Comparing public support for the use of referendums in Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK, and Hungary. Comparative European Politics19(1): 49–76.
31.
SetäläM (2006) On the problems of responsibility and accountability in referendums. European Journal of Political Research45(4): 699–721.
32.
TowfighEVGoergSJGlöcknerA, et al. (2016) Do direct-democratic procedures lead to higher acceptance than political representation?Public Choice167(1): 47–65.
Van der MeerTHakhverdianA (2017) Political trust as the evaluation of process and performance: a cross-national study of 42 European countries. Political Studies65(1): 81–102.
35.
VittoriD.PiletJ. B.RojonS.,PaulisE. (2023). Technocratic Ministers in Office in European Countries (2000–2020): What’s New?Political Studies Review,14789299221140036.
36.
WebbP (2013) Who is willing to participate? Dissatisfied democrats, stealth democrats and populists in the United KingdomEuropean Journal of Political Research52(6): 747–772.
37.
V-Dem Institute (2021) Varieties of democracy dataset: participatory democracy index. Available at: https://v-dem.net/data_analysis/MapGraph/ (accessed 1 December 2022).
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
