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Who Doesn’T Want Democracy? A Multilevel Analysis Of Elite And Mass Attitudes, Brandon Gorman, Ijlal Naqvi, Charles Kurzman

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Despite its global rise in popularity, a significant number of people still oppose democracy. The present study evaluates three competing theories of opposition to democracy—developmentalist, culturalist, and elitist—using a series of multilevel regression models that combine individual- and country-level variables. Results of our statistical analyses suggest that (1) country-level indicators of social, political, and economic development are unrelated to individual support for democracy; (2) macro-cultural factors have mixed effects on individual support for democracy; and (3) individual income and education have strong effects on individual support for democracy, but this relationship is mediated by country-level economic development. Specifically, we find …