Understandings of Democracy examines why democracy is in trouble in today's world, even when most people profess to love democracy. Jie Lu and Yun-han Chu argue that people hold distinct understandings of democracy, and popular understandings of democracy have critically shaped how citizens respond to authoritarian or populist practices in contemporary politics. Using large-scale comparative surveys and survey experiments from seventy-two societies and anational survey in the United States, this book captures how people respond when presented with the tradeoffs between the intrinsic and instrumental values of democracy, as well as the attitudinal and behavioral implications of such responses.