Democracy, Democracy Support and Democracy Socialization

What is the current democratic situation in the world? How can we explain the presence or absence of democracy in countries? How much popular support is there for democracy? How can we explain variance in this support for democracy? These are the key questions to answer in this article. Only a small fraction of the world's countries are democracies, and only a small fraction of the world's population lives in a democracy. Moreover, many existing democracies suffer from a gradual erosion. Favourable conditions for democracy include a positive economic development, a good functioning of the actual democracy, democratic leaders without autocratic temptations, and a strong and robust support for democracy among the population. Support for democracy among citizens in the world is however weak: only a minority said that a representative democracy is a very good way of governing the country and even less support a representative democracy without also supporting a non-democratic rule by experts, a strong leader or the military. Support for democracy on the individual level is the effect of various other orientations such as knowledge of democracy and autocracy, satisfaction with democracy, political trust, subjective well-being, and emancipatory values. People acquire these orientations through experience and socialization. Committed democrats are concerned with the decline of democracy and the intensifying wave of autocratization in the world over the past decade and ask for new initiatives to establish and defend democracy.