2022
DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2022.880709
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Overselling democracy–claiming legitimacy? The link between democratic pretention, notions of democracy and citizens' evaluations of regimes' democraticness

Abstract: Many non-democratic countries anchor the word “democracy” in their national constitutions and everyday rhetoric, while ignoring the conceptual roots of democracy and its scholarly-defined procedural standards. This article argues that governments intentionally “oversell” democracy to their people, in order to exploit the legitimizing effect that the word embodies. This can, however, only succeed if the receiving side is susceptible to such claims to legitimacy. Accordingly, this study investigates how effectiv… Show more

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Cited by 6 publications
(4 citation statements)
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References 67 publications
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“…Nevertheless, Erdogan claimed on the election night that "Türkiye has successfully completed yet another festival of democracy with the May 14 elections". 20 Erdogan is not the only autocrat who over-claims the freeness and fairness of their national elections, as procedural elements of democracy, such as elections, have become an important part of the legitimization strategy of authoritarian regimes (Schedler 2013;Brunkert 2022). Additionally, most countries do not only claim to be democratic, e.g.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Nevertheless, Erdogan claimed on the election night that "Türkiye has successfully completed yet another festival of democracy with the May 14 elections". 20 Erdogan is not the only autocrat who over-claims the freeness and fairness of their national elections, as procedural elements of democracy, such as elections, have become an important part of the legitimization strategy of authoritarian regimes (Schedler 2013;Brunkert 2022). Additionally, most countries do not only claim to be democratic, e.g.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The widespread match between internal and external legitimacy in the case of principled democratic attitudes is good news. It indicates that citizens have a realistic view on the democratic quality of their regime (also see Brunkert, 2022). Furthermore, democratic values as a long term attitude which are in line with external measures of regime quality are a good sign since they show that there is a reservoir of democratic values in (formally) democratic states that they can build on to sustain the regime.…”
Section: Full Sample Democracies Autocraciesmentioning
confidence: 91%
“…This is assessed with the question "How democratically is this country being governed today?" Since democracy enjoys broad support around the globe and because today even autocracies pretend to be democracies, this question produces meaningful answers even in autocratic countries (Brunkert, 2022). Rather than providing realistic assessments of the actual democratic quality of the regime, the answers can be interpreted as indicating how well the political system fulfills the respondents' expectations regarding individual freedoms and participation rights.…”
Section: Indicators Of Political Supportmentioning
confidence: 99%