What Democracy Do Ethno-Populist Voters Want?

• In Event: Backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

Populists around the globe have eroded key (liberal) democratic institutions. How aligned with these actions have the supporters of these parties been? We conduct a well-powered, candidate-choice conjoint experiment in Poland to assess the preferences of the supporters of the ethno-populist incumbent Law and Justice party (compared to other Polish voters) for non-democratic, majoritarian democratic, or liberal democratic candidates. We find that ethno-populist voters reject non-democratic candidates and decidedly favor democratic ones. Ethno-populist voters further prefer candidates who emphasize majority rule, with authorities acting on its behalf, while being unconstrained by unelected institutions and ignoring the demands of minority social and political groups, especially the political opposition. Our study contributes theoretically, methodologically and empirically to the literature on democracy, voting behavior, and populism. We theorize the demand side of the populism-democracy nexus and introduce a novel operationalization of majoritarian democracy. We also test empirically the preferences of populist voters not only for candidates’ general positions on democracy but also on its key norms and practices, which have previously not been examined in the literature.

Authors

• Maria Snegovaya, Virginia Tech

• Tsveta Petrova, Columbia University