The Heinz I. Eulau Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor the best article published in the APSA journal Perspectives on Politics.
Citation from the Award Committee:
Hannah S. Chapman, Margaret C. Hanson, Valery Dzutsati, and Paul DeBell’s “Under the Veil of Democracy: What Do People Mean When They Say They Support Democracy” delve beyond the usual survey question that asks whether respondents support democracy to ask what conceptualizations of democracy people in various countries are referencing when they answer those questions. In other words, they explore the reality that individuals often have multiple, conflicting associations with the abstract concept of democracy. Using the World Values Survey, they find that greater conceptual complexity predicts greater support. They also find that conceptualizations that emphasize procedures such as elections and the protection of rights and liberties increase the likelihood of support for democracy, while conceptualizations that emphasize redistribution or with military or religious rule decrease support. Their analysis generates multiple findings of interest, such as the fact that gender equality is the measure most strongly considered as an essential feature of democracy, even more so than elections. They construct three substantive conceptualizations of democracy: electoral democracy, liberal democracy, and redistributive democracy, as well as an antidemocratic indicator for those who associate army rule and religious rule with democracy. Finally, looking across time and across countries, they find that the content of democratic conceptualizations affects people’s support for democracy, regardless of the regime type in which respondents live (i.e., even under highly repressive regimes). Building on these findings, the authors note that authoritarian regimes continue to rise around the world, and that there has been substantial democratic backsliding and a global democratic recession that threatens even the most established democracies. A better understanding of what people understand democracy to be, and how the public can be educated to better understand what democracy entails, may increase support for democratic rule and push back against the current global trend toward authoritarianism.
Hannah S. Chapman is the Theodore Romanoff Associate Professor of Russian Studies and an Associate Professor of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests are in authoritarian legitimation, political communication, and democratic backsliding in Russia and Eurasia. She is the author of Dialogue with the Dictator: Authoritarian Legitimation and Information Manipulation in Putin’s Russia (Cambridge University Press 2024) and has published in journals such as such as Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Democratization, Government & Opposition, International Studies Perspectives, International Studies Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, Post-Soviet Affairs, and Communist and Post-Communist Studies.
Paul DeBell is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. His teaching and research interests span political psychology and comparative politics, with particular focus on democratic governance, the psychology of political division, and the role of emotion in political behavior. DeBell’s dissertation analyzed the link between populist outrage and democratic backsliding in Hungary, and his current research and teaching revolve around the psychology of democratic citizenship in light of 21st century challenges to self-governance. He received both a Masters and PhD in Political Science from The Ohio State University and Bachelors in Government and Philosophy from the College of William & Mary.
Valery Dzutsati is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of Social Sciences at Augusta University. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Arizona State University, a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a BA in History from North Ossetian State University, Vladikavkaz, Russia. His research interests include interstate and civil conflict, democratization, politics and religion, and collective action. His articles appear in Conflict Management and Peace Science, Nations and Nationalism, Perspectives on Politics, Politics and Religion, Post-Soviet Affairs, and Social Science Quarterly. His co-authored book Defection Denied: A Study of Civilian Support for Insurgency in Irregular War came out at Cambridge University Press in 2022.
Margaret Hanson is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics at Middlebury College. As a political economist and sociolegal scholar, her research examines how law, politics, and economics interact to shape state-society relations in former Soviet states. This includes projects focused on migration, democracy and citizenship, corruption, and economic governance. Her work has been published in Perspectives on Politics, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Europe-Asia Studies, Law and Social Inquiry, and Problems of Post-Communism, and her book, Seeking a Corruption Equilibrium: Authoritarian Legality in Central Asia, is under review.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Kevin Arceneaux (Chair) of SciencesPo, Dr. Simone Dietrich of University of Geneva, and Dr. Melissa Michelson of Menlo College