Pro-democratic Norms against Undemocratic Behavior

• In Event: Democratic Norms, Backsliding, and Public Opinion

Abstract

A recent but extensive literature has sought to deal with the puzzle of why citizens of contemporary democracies support undemocratic actors (e.g., Graham & Svolik 2020; Frederiksen 2022; Saikkonen & Christensen 2022; Krishnarajan 2022). The explanations are manifold: Strong polarization, partisan rationalization, competence differences, or questionable understandings of democracy. All of these factors may sway citizens to vote for undemocratic politicians, as has been the case in countries such as Hungary, Poland, and the United States (e.g., Svolik 2019). Nevertheless, a rather common finding of the aforementioned studies is that citizens, ceteris paribus, do not like undemocratic behavior. On average, citizens punish it; the problem is rather that they may prioritize other considerations to an even greater extent.

Strikingly little is known about *why* citizens have this distaste for undemocratic behavior. Pro-democratic norms against undemocratic behavior seem to exist, but we do not know much about them or their effects. In this paper, we uncover citizens' reasons for opposing undemocratic behavior and subsequently examine whether exposing co-citizens to such pro-democratic norms further decreases resistance to anti-democratic tendencies. We do this through a two-wave design fielded in six backsliding democracies: the United States, India, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, and Mexico (N = 18,000). In the first wave, we use vignettes based on real-world instances of undemocratic behavior to measure citizens' (dis)approval of such behaviors and the reasons behind this (dis)approval. In the second wave, we assign respondents to a treatment or a control group receiving information obtained in the first step. In support of our argument, we show that pro-democratic norms are widespread among citizens and that exposing co-citizens to these norms further induces resistance to undemocratic behavior and democratic backsliding.

We seek to contribute to the aforementioned literature by shifting focus from explanations of support for undemocratic tendencies to citizens' demand for democracy and opposition to anti-democratic tendencies. It is at the core of our argument that researchers need to understand this demand to its' fullest to enable designing effective interventions bolstering democratic stability. In addition, we measure this demand using a novel survey instrument based on real-world instances of undemocratic behavior. Theoretically, we build upon the assumption that citizens' attitudes and behaviors are largely driven by their awareness of social norms (e.g., Bicchieri 2017; Bursztyn 2022). Subsequently and consequently, we design interventions against support for undemocratic behavior based on pro-democratic norms.

The most proximate approach to ours is plausibly the emerging meta-perceptions perspective, which employs corrections of exaggerated perceptions of out-partisans' willingness to subvert democracy to intervene against support for undemocratic practices (Braley et al 2023; Pasek et al 2022). The unquestionable value of this perspective in the United States aside, our approach has several advantages in this regard. First, our approach steers clear of a focus on two partisan camps, which may be less applicable outside of the United States. The interventions employed by our project may be applicable to more politically fragmented backsliding democracies (e.g., Poland) as well as the United States. Second, and related to the overall contribution, we uncover citizens' reasons for opposing undemocratic behavior in the first place.

References:

Braley, Alia, Gabriel Lenz, Dhaval Adjodah, Hossein Rahnama, and Alex Pentland. 2023. “The Subversion Dilemma: Why Voters Who Cherish Democracy Vote it Away.” Nature Human Behaviour 7:1282–1293


Bursztyn, Leonardo, and David Y. Yang. 2022. “Misperceptions About Others.” Annual Review of Economics 14 (1): 425–452.

Frederiksen, Kristian Vrede Skaaning. 2022. “Does Competence Make Citizens Tolerate Undemocratic Behavior?” American Political Science Review 116 (3): 1147–1153.


Graham, Matthew H., and Milan W. Svolik. 2020. “Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States.”, American Political Science Review 114 (2): 392–409

Krishnarajan, Suthan. 2022. “Rationalizing Democracy: The Perceptual Bias and (Un)Democratic Behavior.” American Political Science Review, 1–23

Pasek, Michael H., Lee-Or Ankori-Karlinsky, Alex Levy-Vene, and Samantha L. MooreBerg. 2022. “Misperceptions about out-partisans’ democratic values may erode democracy.” Scientific Reports 12 (1): 16284.

Saikkonen, Inga A.-L., and Henrik Serup Christensen. 2022. “Guardians of Democracy or Passive Bystanders? A Conjoint Experiment on Elite Transgressions of Democratic Norms.” Political Research Quarterly 0 (0): 10659129211073592. https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211073592.

Authors

• Kristian Vrede Skaaning Frederiksen, Aarhus University

• Morgan Le Corre Juratic, Aarhus University

• Tim Lars Allinger, Aarhus University

• Daniel Bischof, Aarhus University