The Affective Politics of Democratic Backsliding

• In Event: Shaping Support for Democratic Norms

Abstract

Recent explanations attribute a significant role to affective politics, suggesting that it provides critical advantages for autocratic leaders to achieve fundamental changes in democratic institutions and norms. However, findings of Broockman et al. (2023) and Voelkel et. al. (2023) result in gridlock, challenging the proposed linkage between them. To break the gridlock, I proposed a new framework. I argue that previous research has struggled to adequately assess the pernicious consequences of affective politics on democratic processes, primarily due to two flawed assumptions: firstly, a misassumption of the homogeneous nature of targets in affective politics, and secondly, an oversimplified perception of uniformity in the tolerance of undemocratic actions. Empirically, I address a crucial challenge by highlighting the limitations in the current operationalization of affective politics. I demonstrate that existing strategies, such as focusing on positive partisanship or measuring feeling distance, fall short in accurately capturing the political bias at both individual and country levels. This is particularly true when considering the influence of weakly attached voters, often overlooked in the study of affective politics. This study aims to bridge these gaps by providing a deeper insight into how affective politics shapes political decision-making in contexts of democratic backsliding and replicating existing evidence with a new theoretical framework. This research, incorporating both individual- and country-level observational data, finds that the affective politics of democratic backsliding exacerbates animosity towards out-parties not just among strong partisans but also among voters with weaker party affiliations. Given the heterogeneous nature of the target audience, findings also indicate that employing positive partisanship or feeling distance as proxies for affective politics falls short of accurately capturing loyalty at the individual level and the propensity for democratic backsliding at the country level. Furthermore, I demonstrate that voters influenced by affective politics exhibit increased tolerance for undemocratic actions, specifically when these target opposition parties and their members, as opposed to other forms of undemocratic practices. Similarly, at the macro level, undemocratic actions targeting the opposition tend to become more prominent than other undemocratic actions within the context of affective politics.

Author

• Yunus E Orhan, North Dakota State University