Liberal democracy encompasses rivaling and sometimes clashing values. One of the most central dilemma's in liberal democracy is that between majoritarian decision making, consensualism, and minority rights. Yet, most of the literature on citizens' support for democratic values tends to overlook such dilemma's. Rather, democratic support for a wide range of singular values is measured as rating-based. Consequently, democrats are likely support both majority rule and minority rights in public opinion surveys. Yet, that tells us little how citizens deal with the central dilemma under different circumstances

This paper aims to theorize and test where people stand on the trade-off between majority rule, consensualism, and minority rights. We focus on three sets of conditions: country (majoritarian vs proportional political culture), the decision making process in which the dilemma takes place, and citizen traits (winner/loser status).

We rely on data from a large scale vignette survey collected in 2021 in four countries (United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden). The vignettes offer 3*6 combinations on the decision making process that specify the relative sizes of majority and minority groups, as well as qualitative traits of the process.