Decisive or Dictatorial: Strongman-Style Leadership and Democratic Attitudes of Populist and Extremist Voters

Why do some citizens in established democracies prefer ‘strongman’ leaders? Is this preference really an expression of anti-democratic attitudes, as the literature interprets it? Are such preferences connected to populist and extremist voting behaviour? Existing research primarily examines the scope and contextual predictors of anti-democratic attitudes; by contrast, we aim to understand what voters actually mean when they express these attitudes. Most citizens in advanced democracies do not have experience with authoritarian leadership and the desire for a 'strong man' may have different meanings, ranging from a full-fledged preference for a dictator to a wish for a democrat who ‘gets things done’. To examine whether citizens see democratic values and strongman leadership as at odds with one another, we conduct a survey experiment of 6000 UK and Australian respondents that measures respondents’ preferences for ‘strongman’ leadership directly and indirectly. We use a conjoint experiment that pitches different democratic and anti-democratic candidates against each other to reveal respondents’ preferences. We find that even respondents who agree with a direct statement for a strongman leader reveal a clear preference for democratic leaders in the experiment. We also find very little variation between mainstream vs populist and extremist voters. This shows that a seeming rejection of democratic ideas might indeed uncover a more complex set of attitudes towards democracy.