Why democrats abandon democracy: Evidence from four survey experiments

Abstract

In several world regions, democracy is in retreat. This retreat is taking place amid growing polarization in many countries, and analysts are increasingly concerned with the role that deepening political divisions play in processes of democratic decline. This article investigates the relationship between partisan polarization and deteriorating public support for democratic institutions. It leverages the case of Indonesia, a major third-wave democracy now in the midst of a democratic regression. Indonesia’s political landscape has become more ideologically polarized in recent years, despite the strength of clientelist networks and low levels of party identification. Using four survey experiments, we find that Indonesians embrace illiberal interventions and abandon democratic institutions when exposed to party and leadership cues. These results suggest that political polarization may prompt citizens to abandon democratic norms even in democracies without strong partisan identities.

Standing up for Democracy? Explaining Citizens’ Support for Democratic Checks and Balances

“…These results contribute to existing knowledge in a number of ways. First, we show that the relationship between governing party support and tolerance of attacks on horizontal and vertical democratic accountability mechanisms extends beyond the context of new democracies in Latin America (Singer, 2018; Svolik, 2020), Africa (Moehler, 2009; Bartels & Kramon, 2020), Asia (Fossati et al, 2021), and the US. Second, we demonstrate experimentally that the relationship is likely causal rather than purely correlational and that it is driven by trade-offs between checks and balances and political tribalism.…”

How is the State Perceived as Fair? A Literature Review of Social Identity-Based Procedural Justice in the National Context

“…However, other identity factors are also worth considering. For example, support for non-democratic policies in Indonesia was influenced by identification with political parties and figures who endorse them (Fossati et al, 2021). Researchers thus could conduct experiments that manipulate social categories (e.g.…”

The Demand Side of Democratic Backsliding: How Divergent Understandings of Democracy Shape Political Choice

“…For citizens to play the role of effective safeguards against executive aggrandizement and the resultant democratic erosion, there is an important pre-condition: a shared understanding that liberal democracy is worth defending against the incumbent's attempts to overstep the limits of government (Weingast 1997;Saikonnen and Christensen 2020;Fossati, Muhtadi, and Warburton 2021).…”

“…Political culture has been cast as central to democratic consolidation, with democratic attitudes among citizens a key determinant of regime stability (Gunther, Diamandouros, and Puhle 1995, 3;Pridham 1995, 171;Linz and Stepan 1996). Arguments regarding the relationship between democratic values and the political system alternatively focus on the demand side, expecting democratic government to result from widespread democratic values among the citizenry (Inglehart and Welzel 2005), or the supply side, with democratic stability depending on the concomitant consolidation of a popular consensus around democratic attitudes (Rose, Mishler, and Haerpfer 1998, 95-96; Earlier seminal contributions on the importance of popular support for democracy (Almond and Verba 1965;Easton 1975;Lipset 1959) have informed more recent studies on the role of mass attitudes for democratic stability (Mauk 2020;Claassen 2020;Grossman et al 2021;Fossati, Muhtadi, and Warburton 2021). Yet whereas the literature on political culture and its broader systemic relevance abounds, there is comparatively little research on how democratic attitudes impact individual political behavior (for an exception, see Canache 2012).…”

“…In electoral democracies, citizens thus represent the last bulwark to resist undemocratic practices by elected leaders (Schedler 2019). This raises the puzzle of why despite widespread support for democracy, citizens often fail to hold the government accountable for violations of liberal democratic principles (Svolik 2020;Aspinall et al 2020;Fossati, Muhtadi, and Warburton 2021).…”