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How democratic are ordinary citizens in Western democracies?
Academic research has extensively studied this question recently.
This 🧵summarizes some of the most important findings from the past 10 years in 22 short tweets 👇🏾
Suthan Krishnarajan
257 posts
Suthan Krishnarajan
@Suthan_1607
Joined September 2020
- A worrying development in our democracies today is that many of us are willing to accept undemocratic behavior by politicians if we agree with them politically. In my new @apsrjournal article, I scrutinize the perceptual logic behind such behavior in the US & globally.🧵👇🏾
- Think Europeans are getting increasingly fed up with their democracies? You might be in for a surprise! The @EurobarometerEU 50-year data tells a different story. Here are the numbers you usually don’t see. A brief 🧵👇🏾 1/5
- Have Europeans moved to the left or right over the last 50 years? From a center-right position during the 1980s, most West Europeans identify with the center-left today. Eastern Europe (and Italy) has moved in the opposite direction. Data: @EurobarometerEU #dataviz
- In recent years, there’s been an explosion of books on the crisis of Western democracies. 📚 In this🧵, I’ll highlight 15 lesser-known books that anyone interested in the state of Western democracies should know about. 👇🏾
- Vladimir Putin’s regime uses extensive propaganda to win public support for war against neighboring countries. But can such efforts really convince ordinary Russians? Our new @ScienceAdvances article shows that the answer is a resounding YES! A short 🧵👇🏾 1/7:
- Herhjemme hører man ofte den samme krisesang om, at folk "er ved at miste troen på demokratiet." Det passer bare ikke. På intet tidspunkt de sidste 50 år har den demokratiske tilfredshed været højere, end den er nu. Glædelig Folketingets åbning! Kilde: Eurobarometer #dkpol
- According to conventional wisdom, we become more satisfied with our democracies after a national election. Elections are democracy’s core events, and seeing them unfold makes us happy about democracy. In my new Socio-Economic Review article, I challenge this assumption. 🧵👇🏾
- To what extent do early-life economic struggles affect democratic support later in life? In our new #bjpols article, @JonathanDouce17, David Andersen, and I examine this question across 97 countries. doi.org/10.1017/S00071… A 🧵👇🏾 1/9
- Replying to @Suthan_1607In this study, I advance an alternative argument: Citizens do not deliberately accept undemocratic behavior to win politically. Instead, they rationalize their democratic conceptions—and convince themselves that a given undemocratic behavior is, in fact, perfectly democratic 6/15
- Replying to @Suthan_1607#1 Policy is most important: @Matt__Graham and @MilanSvolik forcefully demonstrate that people deliberately accept undemocratic behavior if they gain from it politically. People are willing to trade off some democracy to get some policy. 6/22 doi.org/10.1017/S00030…
- Replying to @Suthan_1607#2 We tend to rationalize: Citizens do not deliberately accept undemocratic behavior. Instead, they rationalize their democratic conceptions—and convince themselves that a given undemocratic behavior is, in fact, perfectly democratic. 7/22
- The ongoing debate on subjective vs. objective measures is important, but it seems to overlook that the two approaches each have their own type of potential bias. A short 🧵👇🏾The V-dem report on democracy is just a publicity stunt. See Andrew Little and Anne Meng, "Subjective and Objective Measures of Democratic Backsliding," papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
- Replying to @Suthan_1607In short, people do not give up democracy deliberately to win politically. Instead, they convince themselves that they are getting their preferred policy and democracy. They accept undemocratic behavior because they do not perceive such behavior to be undemocratic. 8/15
