This Pew Research Center analysis on views of how to improve democracy uses data from nationally representative surveys conducted in 24 countries across North America, Europe, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific region, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. All responses are weighted to be representative of the adult population in each country.

Researchers examined random samples of English responses, machine-translated non-English responses, and non-English responses translated by a professional translation firm to develop a codebook for the main topics mentioned across the 24 countries.

Open-ended responses highlighted in the text of this report were chosen to represent the key themes researchers identified. They have been edited for clarity and, in some cases, translated into English by a professional firm.

Key findings:

• In almost every country surveyed, changes to politicians are the most commonly mentioned way to improve democracy. People broadly call for three types of improvements: better representation, increased competence and a higher level of responsiveness.
• People want higher-caliber politicians. This includes a desire to see more technical expertise and traits such as morality, honesty, a 'stronger backbone' or 'more common sense'.
• People want their politicians to hear them and respond to their needs and wishes, and for politicians to keep their promises.
• Concerns about special interests and corruption are common in certain countries, including Mexico, the U.S. and Australia.
• Citizens – both their quality and their participation in politics – come up regularly as an area that requires improvement for democracy to work better.