Selective (Il)liberalism

In parallel to the passage of policies that improve the environmental protection, and the lives of women and LGBTQ+ people, there is growing concern about policies that backslide on these issues. To what extent is support for liberal and illiberal policy proposals conditional on group identity markers? Our thesis is that, irrespective of the direction of the policy, support is conditional on several aspects of group identity: identity markers, perceived social norms, and group framing. Using a visual conjoint experiment in the Netherlands and Germany, we confirm our expectations on the multidimensionality of group identity movers. We show that while descriptive identity markers, group frames, and out-group norms indeed affect respondents’ policy positions, substantive identities and in-group norms are the strongest movers for both progressive and conservative proposals, and that the effects are especially swaying anti-immigration respondents when ethnic group frames and identity cues are used. These results have key implications on the variable nature of citizens’ support for the backsliding of liberal democracy tenets.