Normative Challenges to Democracy: Which Elites Shift Democratic Norms?

• In Event: Democracy and Populism

Abstract

Are political elites to blame for the erosion of democratic social norms and instigating some of the latest democratic backsliding events? Recent scholarship has shed light on the crucial role of political leaders in shifting social norms, from the normalization of radical right attitudes to the erosion of anti-racist norms. Despite this focus on the effects of elite behavior on these norms, there remains a gap in how political elites contributes to democratic backsliding from a social norm perspective. This paper seeks to fill this gap
by analyzing the role of elites in defining and shifting democratic social norms using a computational text analysis approach. Drawing on 15 million tweets from elected officials in eight established democracies, this paper develops the first-to-date transformer model detecting democratic norms in elite communications. The
first contribution of this study is to provide a rich account of cross-national variation of democratic norms definition and conflicts in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, and the
US over the past decade. Second, preliminary evidence suggests a recent shift in the use of democratic norms in elites’ rhetoric in some of these cases, and points to the critical role of mainstream and challenger elites’ interaction. This study contributes to existing literature by highlighting the crucial role of elites in
challenging established democratic norms.

Author

• Morgan Le Corre Juratic, Aarhus University