Explaining Support for Democracy in Guyana

Support for democracy is essential for democracy consolidation and to prevent backsliding into autocracy. This paper employs survey data from Guyana to study explanations of support for democracy. It utilizes seven measures, four of which target decidedly diffuse support with two measuring support for non-democratic principles. It finds that although principled support for democracy based on democracy affirming measures is high and tolerance for non-democratic actions by the incumbent is generally low, large percentages of the citizens (more than 40%) believe that a military takeover in difficult times is justified in some cases. Regime performance, political attitudes, ideological orientation, culture, socioeconomic status and demographic variables all contribute to explaining both specific and diffuse support for democratic and non-democratic principles and they combine to explain between 13.5% and 58.8% of the variance of the democracy/ non-democracy support measures. Furthermore, principled support is shaped by less diffuse support and is impacted by instrumental regime performance. However, inclusion of support for non-democratic principles is crucial to detection of the effects of several variables on principled support or democracy. In addition, cognitive dissonance appears to underlie some of the antecedent relationships with support for democracy and non-democratic principles.