Jie Lu is Ye Chenghai Chair Professor of Political Science at the Renmin University of China. Before joining the Renmin University, he taught at American University in Washington, DC. He studies local governance, the political economy of institutional change, public opinion, and political participation. His regional expertise focuses on the Greater China Region and East Asia. His work has appeared in Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Political Psychology, Politics & Society, Political Communication, Journal of Democracy, and other journals. He is also the author of Varieties of Governance in China: Migration and Institutional Change in Chinese Villages.Yun-han Chu is an academician of Academia Sinica, Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica, and Professor of Political Science at National Taiwan University. He serves concurrently as President of Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. Heis the founder and director of Asian Barometer Survey, a cross-national survey on political values, citizen politics, and the quality of democracy covering 19 Asian societies. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of seventeen books. Among his recent English publications are Democracy in East Asia: A New Century, Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Years, and The Decline of the Western-Centric World and the Emerging New Global Order.

How people understand and define democracy matters. Many scholars have used the fact that people have widely different understandings to cast doubt on the value of asking people survey questions about democracy, especially in the developing world. But Lu and Chu show how these diverse understandings arise, and, in turn, how they shape people's willingness to trade democracy for other desired goods. This has enormous consequences for understanding the current predicament of democracy across the globe.

• Chapter 1: Crisis of Democracy and Democratic Conceptions Chapter 2: New Instruments for Popular Understandings of Democracy Chapter 3: Varying Understandings of Democracy in the Contemporary World Chapter 4: Origins of Varying Understandings of Democracy Chapter 5: Democratic Assessment Colored by Understandings of Democracy Chapter 6: Political Participation and Varying Understandings of Democracy Chapter 7: Conclusions

Jie Lu is Ye Chenghai Chair Professor of Political Science at the Renmin University of China. Before joining the Renmin University, he taught at American University in Washington, DC. He studies local governance, the political economy of institutional change, public opinion, and political participation. His regional expertise focuses on the Greater China Region and East Asia. His work has appeared in Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Political Psychology, Politics & Society, Political Communication, Journal of Democracy, and other journals. He is also the author of Varieties of Governance in China: Migration and Institutional Change in Chinese Villages.Yun-han Chu is an academician of Academia Sinica, Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica, and Professor of Political Science at National Taiwan University. He serves concurrently as President of Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. Heis the founder and director of Asian Barometer Survey, a cross-national survey on political values, citizen politics, and the quality of democracy covering 19 Asian societies. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of seventeen books. Among his recent English publications are Democracy in East Asia: A New Century, Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Years, and The Decline of the Western-Centric World and the Emerging New Global Order.

How people understand and define democracy matters. Many scholars have used the fact that people have widely different understandings to cast doubt on the value of asking people survey questions about democracy, especially in the developing world. But Lu and Chu show how these diverse understandings arise, and, in turn, how they shape people's willingness to trade democracy for other desired goods. This has enormous consequences for understanding the current predicament of democracy across the globe.

• Chapter 1: Crisis of Democracy and Democratic Conceptions Chapter 2: New Instruments for Popular Understandings of Democracy Chapter 3: Varying Understandings of Democracy in the Contemporary World Chapter 4: Origins of Varying Understandings of Democracy Chapter 5: Democratic Assessment Colored by Understandings of Democracy Chapter 6: Political Participation and Varying Understandings of Democracy Chapter 7: Conclusions

Jie Lu is Ye Chenghai Chair Professor of Political Science at the Renmin University of China. Before joining the Renmin University, he taught at American University in Washington, DC. He studies local governance, the political economy of institutional change, public opinion, and political participation. His regional expertise focuses on the Greater China Region and East Asia. His work has appeared in Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Political Psychology, Politics & Society, Political Communication, Journal of Democracy, and other journals. He is also the author of Varieties of Governance in China: Migration and Institutional Change in Chinese Villages.Yun-han Chu is an academician of Academia Sinica, Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica, and Professor of Political Science at National Taiwan University. He serves concurrently as President of Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. Heis the founder and director of Asian Barometer Survey, a cross-national survey on political values, citizen politics, and the quality of democracy covering 19 Asian societies. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of seventeen books. Among his recent English publications are Democracy in East Asia: A New Century, Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Years, and The Decline of the Western-Centric World and the Emerging New Global Order.

How people understand and define democracy matters. Many scholars have used the fact that people have widely different understandings to cast doubt on the value of asking people survey questions about democracy, especially in the developing world. But Lu and Chu show how these diverse understandings arise, and, in turn, how they shape people's willingness to trade democracy for other desired goods. This has enormous consequences for understanding the current predicament of democracy across the globe.

• Chapter 1: Crisis of Democracy and Democratic Conceptions Chapter 2: New Instruments for Popular Understandings of Democracy Chapter 3: Varying Understandings of Democracy in the Contemporary World Chapter 4: Origins of Varying Understandings of Democracy Chapter 5: Democratic Assessment Colored by Understandings of Democracy Chapter 6: Political Participation and Varying Understandings of Democracy Chapter 7: Conclusions