Does Knowing Democracy Affect Answers To Democratic Support Questions? A Survey Experiment In Indonesia

Democratic support surveys are a staple of comparative politics. Yet, skepticism shrouds their validity. Poor public understanding of the concept of democracy has been singled out as a potential issue: Because the concept is neither understood nor experienced uniformly by everyone, the benchmark used to report levels of democratic support is often inconsistent or inaccurate (Dalton, Sin, & Jou, 2007; Kiewiet de Jonge, 2016). The issue is particularly acute in developing democracies, in which the application of democratic rules is often partial, with unequal scope and reach of its socialization (Fuchs & Roller, 2006; Kirsch & Welzel, 2018; Mattes & Bratton, 2007; Schedler & Sarsfield, 2007). In this article, we follow Dahl (1971) and consider that an accurate definition of democracy is at minimum procedural in the sense that it includes the organization of competitive, free and fair elections and the presence of independent media sources. Scholars often assume that individuals who know what democracy is support it because it is the best system of government, or at least one that is superior to other non-democratic alternatives (Canache, 2012; Cho, 2014). This is the interpretation that is given of the positive association between democratic understanding and democratic support that has been found in cross-national surveys. Yet, it may well be that other factors, such as socioeconomic status, are confounding this association. Alternatively, it may also be that the causal link between the two is reversed.