In the Name of Democracy
: What Americans Mean by Democracy, and Why Its Survival Depends on It

My book project, In the Name of Democracy: What Americans Mean by Democracy, and Why Its Survival Depends on It, examines the ways in which the American people’s conceptions of democracy differ from one another, and how that matters to its survival. On January 6, 2021, the rioters who stormed the Capitol and the people who defended it both said they acted to save democracy. Many read this as a story of lies and hypocrisy. I see something more unsettling: Americans disagree not only over how to protect democracy, but over what democracy is. People usually describe democratic backsliding as a conflict between democracy’s defenders and its enemies. I argue it is better understood as a conflict within, among citizens whose ideas of democracy differ in content and in how clearly they are held. Where ideas differ in content, one person’s effort to save democracy looks like its erosion to another. Where they are vague, erosion may go unnoticed, and almost anything can be done in democracy’s name. 

To study this, I developed a novel method for measuring how individual citizens conceive of democracy. I apply it across six national surveys fielded between 2024 and 2026. These include a 2024 survey representative at the national and state levels (N=25,902), a 2026 survey experiment, and a panel that follows the same Americans through the 2026 midterm elections. In-depth interviews before the first survey and after the last show how Americans describe democracy in their own words.

I find that Americans hold at least five distinct, and sometimes conflicting, conceptions of democracy, each with substantial support across party lines. More strikingly, about 40% of Americans hold a conception so blurry that it barely separates democratic from authoritarian arrangements. These citizens value democracy, but their commitment has little shape, and a commitment without shape cannot serve as a standard. The book is also clear about the limits of this account. In a survey experiment, the same act of executive overreach was attributed at random to a Democrat or a Republican. Respondents’ conceptions shaped how much overreach they would accept, but not whether they judged it fairly. Even those with the clearest ideas excused their own party. Understanding governs what citizens can see, but partisan loyalty governs whom they blame. Finally, the midterm panel tests whether these conceptions are stable traits or shift with winning and losing.