Explaining Democratic Attitudes: Internal Consistency, Ideology, and Context

Abstract

Over the last decade, several contributions have discussed recent trends of autocratization and democratic regression in Europe and beyond. Simultaneously, the literature on the main factors influencing individual-level preferences regarding democratic norms has taken different trajectories. It explores support for distinct models of democracy (e.g., stealth, deliberative, liberal democracies) as well as for technocratic and populist attitudes. Currently, seminal contributions attempt to ascertain the link between illiberal attitudes on the one hand, and support for specific party families (e.g., populist radical right) and ideological alignments (right-wing conservatism) on the other hand. However, recent works also increasingly suggest how preferences on democracy can be affected — and even entirely biased — by individual partisanship. This can lead voters to turn a blind eye toward political elites' democratic transgressions when committed by their co-partisans. This panel seeks to explore how individual-level preferences on democratic norms interact with i. Preferences towards other political regimes, ii. Socio-demographic characteristics, iii. Ideological preferences, and iv. The democratic context. Specifically, the panel will explore: • The internal consistency of individual-level democratic attitudes: Do citizens' preferences fit coherently into a model of democracy (e.g., liberal, populist, stealth), or do they mix the main tenets of different ideal types? • The relationship between democratic attitudes and ideological preferences: Are citizens holding right-wing ideological preferences more prone to display illiberal attitudes? • The relationship between democratic attitudes and the electoral context: When the political struggle reaches its bitter and heated moments during an electoral campaign, do citizens become less attentive to democratic norms? • The relationship between democratic attitudes and the political context: Are democratic attitudes affected by the decline of democratic quality or by processes of autocratization? How does the transformation of democracy impact citizens' preferences on political regimes?

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