Shaping the Influence of Partisanship on Voter's Trust in Voting Procedures

• In Event: Shaping Support for Democratic Norms

Abstract

Individuals evaluate democratic institutions through partisan lenses. Parties signal their preferred reform content to their voters, and these voters are expected to adopt such preference as their own. Our research explores how expert information and unilateral decisions shape the influence of party attachment on their support of electoral reforms.

We contend that individuals are more likely to support reforms favored by their own party and to reject reforms favored by their opponents. However, the influence of identity will likely be attenuated when reforms are adopted by consensus or when reforms are endorsed by experts.

We conducted a three-wave survey experiment, comprising about three thousand respondents. In the first wave, we asked the individual preferences over a set of election rules; this stage was designed to establish a baseline to the experiment. In the second wave, we manipulated three elements: the party promoting the reform, the assessment of experts and a party agreement for the adoption of the reform.

As expected, we find that support for a reform is conditional to party attachment. However, when experts bring a favorable assessment over a new election rule, voters are less likely to reject a reform proposed by a disliked party. We also find that voters are more likely to prefer adoption procedures that favor a reform outcome closer to their party position.

However, procedures are expected to impose some detours. Adopting reforms by consensus implies transactions between parties and reform outcomes will deviate from reformers’ initial goals. An individual may give an intrinsic value to consensus while at the same time she may acknowledge the cost of such outcome drift. In the third wave, we manipulated procedures and outcomes in order to disentangle these two intervening factors. We find that individuals overall prefer adopting reforms by consensus, but at the same time, they favor procedures that minimize outcome drifts.

This research has implications for the legitimacy of democratic norms and institutions. Individuals employ a partisan "double standard": they are more willing to punish arbitrary behavior by opponents than politicians of their own party. If partisan identities trump preferences over norms and rules, party leaders will face fewer constraints to tailor the set of rules more convenient for their party goals.

Authors

• Santiago Alles, Universidad de San Andrés

• Carolina Romina Tchintian, UBA-UTDT