Photo credit: Astrid Dünkelmann/MPIfG.
By Moritz Raykowski
This letter seeks to draw attention to the growing tendency among voters to label political decisions and practices as democratic or undemocratic based on ad hoc judgments. This trend signals the emergence of what might be called “folk theories of democracy,” or intuitive, and at times contradictory, conceptualizations of democracy that often diverge from academic definitions. It risks fragmenting our shared understanding of democratic norms and complicating meaningful public discourse.
In the context of global democratic backsliding, it has become clear that democracy is not a fixed ideal but a negotiable practice. Citizens dissatisfied with political outcomes are increasingly likely to label such outcomes as “undemocratic,” regardless of whether they align with institutional or procedural benchmarks. Over time, this leads to a recalibration of what democracy means to different segments of society and fragments public discourse.
What is considered to be democratic and what is not is vastly changing. On the one hand, there is a constant demand for new democratic reforms and political innovations. On the other hand, voters hold conflicting views on these evolving demands. Because institutional reforms inevitably benefit some and disadvantage others, they generate both proponents and opponents, often creating zero-sum dynamics. Decisions about institutional design seldom satisfy all, resulting in an inherent trade-off in voter satisfaction.
There is hardly anything new in the fact that voters’ opinions differ. What is new is how voters cope with unmet demands in current democracies.
When their demands are not fulfilled, voters increasingly label decisions or outcomes as undemocratic. This process unfolds iteratively across various issues, gradually building up a notion of “folk theories” of democracy. As a result, these theories compete with, or even contradict, scholarly definitions. The growing gap impedes meaningful public discourse, as academics attempt to provide conceptual tools and the language grounded in theory, while the public is no longer receptive.
An illustrious example is the German case of the Brandmauer, cordon sanitaire around the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The Brandmauer is strongly opposed by the AfD and its supporters, who label it undemocratic for other parties to refuse cooperation with them. Yet political exclusion is a common practice in parliamentary systems, where governing parties routinely organize majorities based on shared agendas and strategic interests, and establish cordon sanitaires around parties that do not fit their political calculus.
From the executive side, a recent example is the classification of the AfD by the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a confirmed right-wing extremist party. Under existing laws, any party that produces evidence to be considered a case to be examined, a suspected case, or a secured case of right-wing extremism will undergo such levels of scrutiny. This conventional practice is in line with democratic norms of the constitution and cannot reasonably be considered an anti-democratic endeavor.
Nevertheless, AfD politicians and voters increasingly frame such decisions as undemocratic and stylize themselves to be the true democrats and victims of political persecution. Any established party that emphasizes the importance or validity of these democratic norms and practices will risk losing support from voters who hold these distorted conceptions of democracy. This reflects the difficult trade-off political actors face: They appease one group of voters while alienating another, each invoking their own version of democratic legitimacy. The result is a fragmented and polarized public perception of what democracy entails.
More recently, we are also observing an explosion of demands for democratic reforms and innovations. These demands vary in scale, in the institutional aspects they address, and in the political and societal actors who support them. They span debates over vote by mail, e-voting, direct democracy, mini publics, electoral thresholds, voter ID laws, polling access, minority voting, proxy voting, campaign financing, parliamentary size, lobbying regulations, MP income, list quotas, fact-checking in TV debates, disinformation control, content moderation, and more. The list is ever-expanding and reflects the fluid, evolving expectations citizens hold about democratic design. Each issue raises fundamental questions about what qualities make a democracy responsive, inclusive, or fair, as well as which institutions matter most.
Democracy scholars, meanwhile, have long relied on a more structured approach. They assess democracy through typologies, comparisons, and indices based on a limited set of highly informative indicators grounded in theory. This framework helps identify patterns, measure regime types, and explain political outcomes. Yet the concerns of voters often operate on a different scale. A seemingly minor institutional feature might carry enormous symbolic weight for certain groups. We cannot always predict which institutional arrangements will provoke widespread dissatisfaction until these issues emerge in public debate and generate political consequences. And, over time, new demands will continue to rise, and their significance may vary. Some demands persist in societies and gradually gain broader acceptance, while others lose momentum and fade from the political agenda.
Crucially, beyond scholarly attention, what matters is how these debates around demands unfold in the public sphere. What scholars treat as technical or empirical questions may, for voters, be immediate and emotionally charged matters of democratic design. While scholars can analyze trade-offs and assess institutional performance, voter perceptions are often more reactive, shaped by whether a particular rule or procedure supports their desired outcomes. Such perceptions are rarely grounded in theory and are destined to continuously change as societies continuously try to settle debates on these demands. Yet they strongly influence the legitimacy of democratic systems in practice.
Of course, majority rule alone does not resolve these tensions. When citizens fundamentally disagree over which demands are democratic, and when competing groups label opposing views as undemocratic, shared understandings collapse. Political systems cannot meet all demands, especially when satisfying one group means frustrating another. The more such demands multiply, the more contestation becomes embedded in democratic life.
In this light, contestation and consolidation should be seen as two sides of the same democratic coin—and this coin will continue to spin. As demands for democratic reforms intensify, voters are repeatedly confronted with dissatisfaction and disappointment.
Over time, standards of what counts as democratic drift. If this drift continues, we risk losing the common vocabulary, the conceptual “toolbox” that once connected scholars and citizens. Without that shared foundation, efforts to engage the public in democratic discourse risk falling flat. Academic language may cease to resonate with voters whose definitions of democracy are shaped more by experience and frustration than by theory.
To combat this, scholars must help anchor public debates by contextualizing contested practices and tracing their historical and legal roots. Often, the reinterpretation of established democratic practices as undemocratic is enabled by the lack of context. Providing such clarity does not eliminate disagreement, but it equips citizens with a more consistent framework for evaluating reforms and outcomes. Scholars should therefore highlight which laws are central to the issue at hand, the historical contexts from which they stem, and the contributions they have made to democratic practice in the past. If democracy is to endure, its legitimacy cannot rest only on institutions or majority rule. It must also rely on preserving a shared language of democracy, which should be robust enough to accommodate contestation without losing coherence.
Moritz Raykowski is a doctoral researcher at the International Max-Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy and the Cologne Center for Comparative Politics at the University of Cologne.
