Abstract

Across Africa, people have varied understandings of what “democracy” is, with implications for democratic support, political participation, and willingness to resist democratic backsliding.

Drawing on insights from literature about varied understandings of democracy and partisan bias in perceiving democratic backsliding, I argue that partisanship influences the ways that citizens understand democracy—specifically, whether they understand it in procedural or instrumental terms—but that this relationship depends on the nature of political competition within a country.

Using cross-sectional survey data from the Afrobarometer, alongside data from the World Values Survey over time in Ghana and Zimbabwe, this study demonstrates ruling party partisans are more likely to understand democracy in instrumental terms, while opposition party partisans understand it in more procedural terms.

This partisan gap in understandings of democracy is more pronounced in countries with higher levels of clientelism and lower levels of multiparty competition.