From conspiracy beliefs to anti-democratic attitudes: The role of context

Prior research suggests that populist attitudes and conspiracy beliefs negatively affect mass-level support for democracy (Bos et al. 2021; Moore 2017; Zaslove and Meijers 2021). Much less is known about the role of context in conditioning this relationship. This paper aims to address this gap by examining how a country’s level of democracy alters the relationship of conspiracy beliefs and democratic attitudes at the individual level. Specifically, we expect that conspiracy belief is substantially more damaging for democratic sentiments in liberal democracies, while such a relationship should be weaker in illiberal regimes. We test this argument using data from the most recent wave of the European Social Survey and supplement it with different macro level indicators provided by V-Dem. Linear mixed-effect models reveal that individuals endorsing conspiracy beliefs in highly liberal-democratic countries indeed tend to place less importance on living in a democracy than individuals who endorse conspiracy beliefs just as much, but live in less democratic, more corrupt, and more clientelist countries. Likewise, those endorsing conspiracy beliefs tend to be more accepting of a strong ruler above the law in more democratic and less corrupt contexts, while this relationship is much weaker in countries with higher degrees of clientelism, corruption, and lower levels of democracy. By considering the role of context, these results provide a more nuanced picture of the political implications of the spread of conspiracy beliefs.