Where Supply Meets Demand for Democratic Transgressions

• In Event: Democratic Erosion in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The literature on party and elite cues has documented well that political elites shape, among other political and policy stances, citizens’ regime preferences. In this paper, we examine the demand and supply side of this process. Which kinds of political parties are more likely to influence their supporters’ tolerance of democratic transgressions? And which kinds of voters are more easily swayed by their favoured parties to accept democratic transgressions? Our theoretical focus is 1) normative commitment to democracy and 2) ideological polarization. We ask: Are political parties and/or voters with more authoritarian and more extreme views more likely to support democratic transgressions? These relationships have been previously explored in the literature on political parties, but mostly separately. By examining simultaneously both the supply and demand side of party influence on voters’ regime preferences and teasing their causal primacy, we contribute to the literatures on democracy and voting behaviour. Our empirical focus is the Czech Republic, where we field vignette survey experiment. We find that party system polarization both the demand and the supply side is the primary driver of democratic transgressions.

Authors

• Tsveta Petrova, Columbia University

• Joep van Lit, Radboud University Nijmegen

• Natasha Wunsch, ETH Zurich