ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that citizens do know what democracy is, even if their knowledge might vary according to political sophistication, and that they do not necessarily understand democracy in the same way. It shows that citizens in Indonesia, Korea and Thailand are cognitively capable of defining democracy and that only particular aspects of modernization theory are helpful to explain what shapes citizens' democratic cognitive skills across the three countries. The chapter investigates whether citizens' conception of democracy are based either on enduring cultural values, or social circumstances, or the degree of their formal and informal political participation, or participation in civic and religious organizations, or upon what they learn from short-, medium- and long-term experience about what democracy is and what it does both at home and abroad. Indonesia is the latest country in Asia to have made a successful transition to democracy following the fall a President Suharto in May 1998.
