Democratic mind: Under what conditions can political intuitions help us sustain democratic checks and balances?

Abstract

In 2022, six of the 27 members of the European Union were reported to experience democratic backsliding – a gradual erosion of liberal democracy, where elected leaders disturb the checks and balances that constrain their power. This has been met with little backlash from citizens. At the same time, public opinion research shows high and stable levels of support for democracy. Moreover, evidence from psychology, anthropology, and cognitive science suggests that individuals should support constraints on authorities, because humans are vigilant of rule violations and weary of being dominated. Therefore, it is puzzling why citizens do not react when authorities undermine democratic checks. DEMOMIND strives to solve this puzzle by investigating the interaction between the human mind and democratic institutions. DEMOMIND is the first project that proposes that political intuitions are essential to understanding support for democracy and asks ‘Under what conditions can our political intuitions help us sustain democratic checks and balances?’.Cognitive research suggests that humans are equipped with certain intuitions, shaped by conditions in pre-agricultural ancestral environments, that should make democratic checks and balances more or less compelling. DEMOMIND will (1) develop a novel theory of intuitions as micro-foundations of democracy; (2) create a typology of political intuitions relevant for democratic checks and balances; (3) investigate the trade-offs they create and their consequences for democracy; (4) model intuition-based trade-offs to assess system-level outcomes. DEMOMIND will use a unique combination of methods from different disciplines to achieve these objectives: analyse anthropological records, develop video-based survey experiments, and build agent-based models. By focusing on the role of political intuitions and testing their impact on support for liberal democratic institutions, the project will break new ground in the theory of democracy.