This paper sheds light on the prevalence and the correlates of citizen support for liberal democracy and four of its deformations: a populist, a technocratic, a post-democratic, and a majoritarian-relativist conception of democracy. Using original survey data from a representative German online panel, the findings provide systematic evidence on the multifaceted nature of citizens’ democratic preferences. Only few citizens are, for instance, populist without also being liberal democrats, and many endorse two or more deformations of liberal democracy simultaneously. Yet, these forms of overlap are not arbitrary but conform to conceptually posited relative affinities between these deformations. The examined conceptions of democracy furthermore differ in their associations with political support, ideology, education, and political interest. In addition to offering novel empirical insights, the findings also highlight why some measures may underestimate the complexity of democratic preferences.

This article investigates the ways in which political parties are codified in modern democratic constitutions, providing a unique cross-sectional and longitudinal overview of the patterns of party constitutionalization in post-war Europe. Although the constitutions of western liberal democracies traditionally have paid little attention to the role of parties, evidence suggests that in contemporary democracies, both old and new, they are increasingly accorded a formal constitutional status. Little is known, however, about the substantive content of their constitutional position or about the normative connotations of their constitutional codification. In this article, we demonstrate that there is a clear correlation between the nature and the intensity of party constitutionalization and the newness and historical experience of democracy and that, with time, the constitutional regulation of the extra-parliamentary organization and the parties’ rights and duties has gained in importance at the expense of their parliamentary and electoral roles. The analysis furthermore suggests that three distinct models of party constitutionalization can be identified – Defending Democracy, Parties in Public Office, and Parties as Public Utilities – each of which is related to a particular conception of party democracy.