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New article out by Markus Siewert and co-authors in CPS

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In their paper Conceptualizing and Measuring Citizens’ Preferences for Democracy Markus B. Siewert together with Pascal König (TU Kaiserslautern / Harvard University) and Kathrin Ackermann (Heidelberg University) provide a systematic review of 30 years of research on citizen attitudes towards different types of democracy. Having grown and diversified greatly, the state of the art of research has resulted in a highly fragmented field in which empirical evidence cannot easily be integrated into a consistent larger picture. Applying the seminal framework by Munck and Verkuilen to the demand-side of democracy, the paper maps the various conceptualizations and measurement approaches that have been chosen to study citizens’ preferences for democracy. By systematically carving out the variation in the chosen approaches, the review shows why existing research can hardly add up to a clear diagnosis regarding what kind of democracy citizens prefer. A critical discussion based on this review highlights that cumulative research will require a stronger conceptual and methodological integration between different strands in the literature.

Article: König, Pascal D., Markus B. Siewert & Kathrin Ackermann.  2022. Conceptualizing and Measuring Citizen’s Preferences for Democracy. Taking Stock of Three Decades of Research in a Fragmented Field. Comparative Political Studies. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140211066213.