Institutional Design Preferences Among German and US Citizens: Results from a Factorial Survey Experiment

How do institutional parameters affect citizens’ evaluations of a political system as democratic? While attitudes to existing institutions have mostly been studied only in terms of support, this article uses experimental data to explore and compare citizens’ institutional design preferences in Germany and the US. Findings show that participation of voters in decision-making, deliberative decision-making, delegate representation, and the presence of revision and appeal lead to more positive perceptions of democratic quality in both countries. While in Germany, we find these effects to be influenced by party affiliation as well as citizens’ conceptions of democracy, we do not find meaningful differences for partisanship and less pronounced effects of conceptions of democracy in the US. We conclude that while discrepancies between citizens’ design preferences and institutional reality constitute a potential threat to democracy, institutions could be reformed to meet citizen preferences without compromising the core of liberal democracy.