European Sociopolitical Mentalities: Identifying Pro- and Antidemocratic Tendencies. Part I – Individual citizens’ perspective

Abstract:

The article focuses on citizens’ predispositions for democracy and discusses the concepts of democratic mentality, demos, and demoi. Democratic mentality was operationalized by attitudes, values, and behavioral tendencies which promote civility and civic political culture. Theoretical analysis is followed by an empirical assessment of diverse intranational and international mentalities: prodemocratic, antidemocratic, and nondemocratic tendencies. Constellations of attitudes were explored by secondary data analysis of European Values Study (EVS wave 4, 2008–2010 period, 44 countries, 73 questionnaire items). Individual citizens (N = 63,281) were classified by k-means cluster analysis into: (1) ‘secular democrats’, (2) ‘religious democrats’, (3) ‘nondemocratic skeptics’, (4) ‘antidemocratic intolerant economically deprived traditionalists’, and (5) ‘antidemocratic religious radicals’. All mentalities occurred in each country; countries differed by the incidence of democratic (1 + 2), nondemocratic (3), and antidemocratic (4 + 5) mentalities. Democratic mentality was prevalent in the Northwest (especially in Scandinavia) and among elites; its average incidence in Europe was 40.9%. The results manifested trans-nationally shared political mentalities of European citizens, indicated that democrats were significantly present in every country, and confirmed presence of a robust demos in the North-Western Europe. International democratic mentality (trans-national demos) can be viewed as a possible source of democratic peace (Pax democratica). Civility was an important component of democratic mentality. It was demonstrated that democracy can function without prevalent active political participation but it is hard to conceive democracy without widespread civility. Whenever democracy is being exported or restored, the process must primarily focus on civility and not be limited to mere cultivation of political culture.