To understand Jie Lu and Yun-Han Chu’s new book Understandings of Democracy: Origins and Consequences Beyond Western Democracies, we must first situate it within the context of ongoing scholarly debates about the meaning of democracy itself. After the rise of the World Values Survey, the Global Barometers Survey, and other cross-national survey programs in the aftermath of the third wave of democratization, scholars spent decades studying national populations’ regime preferences, especially the degree to which people in different countries express support for democracy as the preferred form of government. From the beginning, the results of this research were consensual on one point: in practically all countries—regardless of the type of regime—solid majorities express a preference for democracy over its authoritarian alternatives. This insight quickly became conventional wisdom and gave rise to widespread democratic enthusiasm. Obviously, established democracies were firmly anchored in their publics’ legitimacy beliefs, while most autocratic regimes were ripe for a democratic turnover whenever people got a chance to stand up against their rulers. This optimism shaped a dominant view of public opinion: democracy is everywhere the natural regime preference of most people because the civil liberties and political rights inherent to democracy satisfy a universal human desire for freedom.

The slowing of democracy’s global expansion after around 2010 and the apparent global receding of democracy under the surge of authoritarian populism have transformed the initial democratic euphoria into sound pessimism. Increasingly, scholars have started to doubt how much one can trust survey responses to regime preference questions and whether people really mean what they say when expressing support for democracy. Accordingly, researchers began examining attitudes that allow one to distinguish the verbal support of democracy from the type of value motivation driving them to express support for democracy, as well as from the kind of notion that they associate with the buzzword “democracy.” Various typologies emerged from this new direction of investigation, distinguishing “instrumental” supporters who express a preference for democracy out of hope that democracy is a means to other ends, like order and prosperity, versus “intrinsic” supporters who cherish democracy as an end in itself. In the same vein, authors now differentiate between “illiberal” and “liberal” supporters of democracy, depending on whether the expressed democratic preference is decoupled from or anchored in liberal values. Linked to the different motivations that drive expressions of democratic support are different notions of what democracy actually means, which appear obvious in the juxtaposition between procedure-oriented and delivery-oriented understandings of democracy.

As this research shows, verbal support for democracy is no reliable indicator of how legitimate given regimes are in the eyes of their people. What matters, instead, is the extent to which intrinsic/liberal support outweighs instrumental/illiberal support, and people with a procedure-oriented understanding of democracy prevail over those with a delivery-oriented understanding.

This is the context for Lu and Chu’s comprehensive study of popular understandings of democracy (PUD). Mostly based on data from the Global Barometer Survey, Lu and Chu document significant and meaningful variation in PUD among national publics across the globe. They show that variation exists between regional groups of countries (i.e., North America and Latin America, South Asia and East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa), as well as between nations within regions and between different sociodemographic segments within national populations. The key factor shaping this variation in PUDs is to what extent people hold a delivery-oriented notion of democracy that makes them willing to tolerate incisions into democracy’s liberal principles in return for instrumental gains, versus the extent to which people internalize a procedure-oriented understanding, as a result of which they oppose restrictions of liberal principles for instrumental gain. In a fourfold typology, Lu and Chu classify those who hold the former type of PUD as “benefit-seekers” and those who hold the latter type as “principle-holders,” with two mixed types in between these poles. Lu and Chu quantify the exact proportion of each type of democracy supporter for each of the more than 60 nations under study. They argue that the ratio of “principle-holders” to “benefit-seekers” in a public is the decisive figure to look at, for a simple reason: the more that “principle-holders” outnumber “benefit-seekers,” the less vulnerable is a public to authoritarian-populist temptations propagated by demagogues who pretend to fulfill the will of the people while curtailing liberal principles. Thus, variation in PUD is a critically important object of study.

Accordingly, Lu and Chu not only document existing variation in PUD but also analyze its sociodemographic and social-psychological antecedents, as well as its behavioral consequences, with a focus on which individual characteristics make respondents more likely to be “principle-holders” and which societal features make procedure-oriented understandings of democracy more prevalent in a nation.

To do so, Lu and Chu take advantage of a newly developed survey instrument composed of a well-designed battery of 16 items that—in randomized order—prompt respondents to rank in order of preference various statements about the potential benefits of democracy, latently structured alongside a policy outcomes versus normative principles polarity. Using various tools, Lu and Chu confirm the validity and reliability of their instrument, which they then use to create a continuum from delivery-oriented to procedure-oriented PUDs, as well as their fourfold typology. Lu and Chu’s study is methodologically sound and at the cutting edge of advanced cross-national survey research—an asset that is also evident in their extensive use of multilevel models.

From a plethora of interesting and well-documented findings, I report here a selection of those I consider the most insightful. Not surprisingly but importantly, individuals’ education and political interest predict everywhere a stronger procedure-oriented understanding of democracy. Yet, this individual-level effect increases in magnitude alongside countries’ levels of socioeconomic development, being more pronounced in developed than in developing societies. Moreover, socioeconomic development increases the proportion of “principle-holders” in a nation and reduces demographic polarization with “benefit-seekers.” Short-term economic crises tend to tilt PUDs toward a greater emphasis on delivery, despite the otherwise documented stability of PUDs. By and large, these findings confirm modernization/emancipation theory.

However, individuals’ socioeconomic status (in terms of income) makes them more willing to sacrifice liberal principles for instrumental gains in autocracies but less willing to do so in democracies, which is in line with status quo bias theory. Among the numerous behavioral consequences of PUDs, I find one particularly noteworthy: although principle-holders are generally more likely to engage in contentious political action, they are much more likely to do so in autocratic than in democratic regimes. This insight implies that, if socioeconomic development increases the proportion of principle-holders and procedure-oriented democracy supporters in autocracies, bottom-up pressures fueled by regime-challenging action from below will increase.

Logically structured, eloquently written, firmly embedded in empirical theory, and richly illustrated, this monograph provides meaningful and genuinely novel insights. Credible and important as Lu and Chu’s results are, however, there are several thematic omissions. Although the authors cite the literature on the influence of value orientations on different understandings of democracy, they do not seriously engage with the theoretical argument and established finding that variation on patriarchal versus emancipative values explains variation on authoritarian versus liberal notions on democracy. Neither do Lu and Chu link their operationalization of PUDs to previous alternative operationalizations, such as those from the World Values Survey, thus missing an important opportunity to cross-validate separate research tracks within the same field of study.

Despite this criticism, Lu and Chu’s monograph is an important and solid contribution to our understanding of legitimacy beliefs and regime preferences. It is both easily accessible and certainly worth reading.