How Citizens Think About Democratic Decision-Making: A Composite Model of Democratic Preference Formation

Citizens’ preferences for democratic decision-making processes have traditionally been understood as stable, principled orientations. Yet, empirical findings reveal these preferences to be dynamic, context-dependent, and often shaped by instrumental considerations. This paper argues that such variability does not indicate the absence of meaningful attitudes but instead reflects a pragmatic structure of democratic reasoning. I integrate the empirical insights on citizens’ attitudes towards democratic erosion and democratic innovation with advances in democratic theory to propose a composite model of citizens’ process preferences. This model includes three interrelated components: (1) normative foundations rooted in values and socialisation, (2) context-based evaluations shaped by political environments, and (3) instrumental judgments linked to expected policy outcomes. This framework reconciles apparent contradictions in the literature on democratic erosion and democratic innovation, demonstrating that citizens can hold principled, evaluative, and outcome-oriented views.