Support for democratic values

Attempts to distinguish between lack of confidence in a democratic government that falls short of public expectations, and lack of confidence in democratic government per se. There has been too little research into what the word ‘democracy’ means to people, but such research as there has been suffices to support the view that it is a multi‐dimensional concept. If one applies the familiar distinction between individual and collectivist theories of democracy, it is clear that different countries have found different points of balance between the two, although there is little evidence to suggest that public attitudes to democracy have clustered around the two poles.