While public opinion surveys indicate that the vast majority of citizens around the world are in favour of “a democratic political system”, recent evidence suggests that non-democratic alternatives are increasingly popular. Citizens in established democracies voted for leaders who openly subverted democratic norms, such as Trump, Orban, Bolsonaro and Modi (Graham and Svolik, 2020). And a growing share of citizens express support for being governed by “a strong leader who bends the rules to get things done” (Foa and Munk, 2017). Through a latent profile analysis of data from a Pew Research Centre survey conducted in 38 countries, we show that while very few people reject democratic models of government (e.g., representative or direct democracy) just under 70% of citizens, whom we refer to as either “shy” or “hybrid” democrats, support non-democratic models (e.g., autocracy or military junta) alongside democratic ones. We also test two competing country-level explanations for these preferences. The first is that they are part of a country’s authoritarian legacy. The second, inspired by the example of the Asian Tigers, is that economic growth contributes to the perception that strong leaders are more capable of ensuring prosperity. Our results show that shy or hybrid democrats are indeed more prevalent in countries with a longer history of dictatorship (e.g., Hungary, Poland, Spain, Lebanon, South Africa, Tanzania, India, Russia and Vietnam) and in countries that experienced economic growth in the five years preceding the survey (e.g., Turkey, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, India, Philippines and Vietnam).