Instrumental or procedural democrats? The evolution of procedural preferences after democratization

Abstract

This paper addresses instrumentalist attitudes to democracy–attitudes according to which democracy is not valued for itself, but accepted only as a means to specific policy goals. Pippa Norris has argued that in the process of democratic consolidation, such instrumentalist conceptions of democracy are replaced with proceduralist ones, leading to an enlightened understanding of democracy. We use the unique case of German reunification to show that this process takes at least a generation to complete. Based on data from a novel battery of items fielded via the German GESIS panel, we show an East–West divide in democratic instrumentalism, which, however, is smaller among younger generations. While our findings do confirm Norris’ thesis that growing democratic experience leads to a shift from instrumental to procedural understandings of democracy, we also show that instrumental democrats still make up a sizeable portion of the citizenry that might withdraw support if dissatisfied.