Who Forgives Undemocratic Behaviour? Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

• In Event: "Looking for Freedom" and Other Democratic Values

Abstract

In recent years, pundits and social scientists alike have observed a broad trend towards democratic backsliding across Europe. Using novel data from a cross-country survey with an embedded conjoint experiment in five European countries, this paper investigates the reasons why democratically minded citizens may support politicians who violate democratic norms. Our theoretical expectations derive from literature which suggests that voters do not necessarily support undemocratic behaviour, but rather are willing to overlook or forgive such behaviour under certain circumstances. We identify three trade-off scenarios, i.e., interest representation; competence; and ideological congruence, and distinguish between the electoral versus liberal component of democracy to offer a better understanding of the circumstances under which voters are more likely to forgive violations of democratic norms. We test our theoretical expectations on the following European countries, each as a representative of a specific European region: Estonia (Baltics), Spain (Southern Europe), Germany (Western Europe), Poland (Central Europe), and Sweden (Scandinavia). Our findings suggest that citizens who perceive the economy as strong and who are satisfied with their personal financial situation are more likely to tolerate undemocratic behaviour. Moreover, our analyses reveal that citizens are less likely to punish the undemocratic behaviour of the party they voted for in the previous election. This particularly applies to voters of parties with ambivalent democratic positions. Finally, we show that citizens do not value all elements of democracy equally as they are more likely to punish violations related to electoral fairness than to checks and balances and civil liberties. In sum, our paper contributes to the broad literature on democratic stability in advanced democracies.

Authors

• Daphne Halikiopoulou, University of York

• Filip Milacic, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

• Sofia Vasilopoulou, King's College London