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How Europeans view and evaluate democracy, a decade later II
Time:
Tuesday, 09/July/2024:
1:30pm - 3:00pm
Session Chair: Mónica Ferrín Session Chair: Pedro Magalhaes
Location:B103, Floor 1
Iscte's Building 2 / Edifício 2
Session Abstract
Round 10 of the European Social Survey (2021-2022) included a rotating module on European’s understandings and evaluations of democracy, largely replicating a previous module applied in Round 6 (2012- 2013). At the time, Europe was going through one of deepest economic and financial crises on record. However, the results and their analysis showed that, in spite of very large variations in how Europeans evaluated the performance of their democracies, the way they conceived “democracy” pointed to a widespread support for liberal and electoral institutions, even if complemented with equally important demands for economic equality and, to a lesser extent, for opportunities for a direct say in policymaking through referendums and initiatives.
A lot has happened in the following decade, including a refugee crisis, referendums with unprecedented outcomes, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine, accompanied by an underlying expansion of EU intervention in domestic politics. At the same time, radical right-wing parties have seen their electoral fortunes improve all over the continent, as the use of populist rhetoric deepened and increased. In countries such as Hungary and Poland, full fledged populist governance and a rule-of-law crisis has taken hold, with both domestic and Europe-wide consequences.
How have these developments affected Europeans’ views and evaluations of democracy? This session welcomes paper submissions addressing how views and evaluations of democracy in Europe can be mapped today and how they - and their underlying sources - have changed in this last decade, resorting to the rich and high-quality data of ESS’s Round 6 and 10. For Round 10, the original module was adapted to allow the measurement of conceptions and evaluations not only along the liberal democratic, direct democratic, and social democratic dimensions, but also along the dimension of populist democracy, a view that stresses vertical over horizontal accountability and a unrestrained responsiveness to a sovereign “people”. How has this enriched our knowledge about how Europeans understand “democracy” and evaluate the performance of their regimes?
We welcome papers both on the substantive topic - conceptions and evaluations of democracy in Europe, their causes and implications - and on the methodological challenges involved in assessing them.
Presentations
Attitudes Toward Liberal Democracy in Poland: A Three-Wave Panel Study of Stability and Change
Ben Stanley
SWPS University, Poland
The October 2023 elections in Poland saw the populist-nativist Law and Justice (PiS) removed from power after eight years of controversial government characterised by substantial democratic backsliding. The victory of a broad pro-democratic coalition running the gamut from conservatives to socialists marks the potential beginning of the renewal of liberal democracy in Poland, but also carries with it significant risks. The new government faces the onerous task of repairing the damage visited upon Poland’s democratic institutions, in particular the judicial branch, but in conditions where the necessary haste may raise the risk of violating the very principles it aims to restore.
This paper investigates the stability and fluctuation of Polish citizens' attitudes towards liberal democracy through a three-wave panel survey aligned with the 2023 Polish elections. Incorporating several measures from ESS waves 6 and 10 along with other established measures of liberal-democratic attitudes, this study captures baseline attitudes towards key components of liberal democracy in May 2022, comparing them with attitudes immediately prior to the October elections, and then with attitudes six months after the election. These data make it possible to evaluate whether and how voters’ attitudes towards liberal democracy remain stable or shift following a change of government. Data collected for the first two waves suggest stability of attitudes, but, in line with recent research into “democratic hypocrisy” (Simonovits, McCoy and Littvay 2022), the third wave is expected to reveal greater tolerance of illiberal actions on the part of supporters of the new government. This shift towards greater tolerance for illiberalism is hypothesised to be more substantial among voters who have greater awareness of the changes the new government has implemented, and among those who evaluate these changes more positively. Conversely, supporters of PiS are more likely to show the opposite tendencies, becoming more intolerant of illiberalism in general, with awareness and negative evaluation of the government’s changes compounding their turn towards liberal-democratic values.
This anticipated divergence in attitudes underscores the complex challenges facing Poland's new government, which must navigate the fine line between necessary reforms and the preservation of liberal democratic principles. This study has implications for the broader discourse on democracy's vulnerability and vitality. The findings will contribute to understanding how shifts in political power affect public attitudes towards democracy, informing strategies for reinforcing democratic norms and institutions.
Democratic Ideals and Alternatives: Understanding Discontent with Democracy
Edward Freeland
Princeton University, United States of America
Disenchantment with democracy can arise from several sources that reflect very different priorities and values. As researchers ponder the significance of declining satisfaction with democracy (SWD), it is important to distinguish between dissatisfaction that stems from a weak commitment to democratic ideals paired with an openness to populism or non-democratic rule and dissatisfaction that stems from a strong commitment to democratic ideals paired with disappointment due to perceptions of corruption and democratic dysfunction. Conflation of these two types of dissatisfaction could lead us to overestimate the extent of democratic disenchantment and underestimate support for effective democratic reform. Using ESS data, this paper explores whether citizens who place themselves on the dismal side of SWD measures have very different reasons for being there. Using principal components analysis, we examine the extent of heterogeneity among those with low SWD scores to determine (1) the proportion of democratic idealists and (2) the attitudes, political behaviors and demographic characteristics that distinguish the democratic idealists from the pessimists.
How do migrants view and evaluate democracy in European host countries?
Intifar Chowdhury1, Ian McAllister2
1Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia; 2Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
How do migrants view and evaluate democracy in European host countries? Some prior studies contend that migrants are less satisfied with democracy because of poor political representation or exclusion in parliament. However, socialisation theories suggest that those who socialised in regimes where critical attitudes towards political authorities are discouraged are more allegiant citizens with relatively positive evaluations of democracy. Using time series data from 2002 to 2022 in 10 rounds of the European Social Survey in 39 countries, along with V-Dem democracy scores of migrant origin and host countries, we examine migrant attitudes towards host country’s democracy. The results show that while migrants from other democratic countries have similar attitudes to those born in the host country, those from less democratic countries deem it more important to live in a democratically governed state and have relatively higher satisfaction with democracy. This suggests that despite the expectations of political exclusion theories, the relative democraticness of the leaving country plays an important role in shaping the political attitudes towards host countries. The findings have implications for the challenges encountered by the EU in supporting democracy and democratic initiatives in its eastern and southern neighbourhoods, and for integrating migrants into the more democratic Western neighbourhood.
