Research on democracy and democratisation has tended to emphasise macro-level explanations of ‘transition' and ‘consolidation' which stress the roles played by institutions and elites. By and large, these studies of democracy were conducted by political scientists whose concerns with political institutions, formal regime shifts, and comparative country studies shaped the questions and set the agendas for debate. However, by focusing on ‘institutional factors' rather than on ‘the practices and ideas of local people', which locally legitimise or do not legitimise democracy and practices associated with it, these studies have tended to provide accounts of only one side of the process.