| Abstract: | Democracy is to a significant extent what political actors and ordinary people make of it. The inquiry reported here determines how the individuals who are the constituents of any actual or potential Australian political order conceptualise democracy and their own place in it. Political discourse analysis and Q methodology are deployed to reveal the discourses of democracy present in Australia. The four discourses uncovered are termed resigned acceptance, inclusive republicanism, right‐minded democracy, and anxious egalitarianism. Their results illuminate Australian political culture, the attractiveness and feasibility of different kinds of institutional innovation, and the real‐world prospects for various kinds of democratic theory. |
