Time: Wednesday, 10/July/2024: 9:30am - 11:00am Session Chair: Mónica Ferrín Session Chair: Pedro Magalhaes |
Location: B103, Floor 1 Iscte's Building 2 / Edifício 2 |
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.
When political competition revolves around models of democracy. Democratic views, vote choice and party system polarization
Sciences Po Grenoble, University of Grenoble Alpes, France
With its two dedicated modules, the ESS provides significant insights into layman’s views of democracy. Notably, research indicates strong support for liberal, social, and direct models, suggesting a shared understanding of democracy. Yet Europeans amalgamate democratic features that may be considered distinct or incompatible. The mismatch is not only evident from the theoretical standpoint of competing models of democracy but also given that political parties address the antecedents and consequences of liberal, social, or direct democracy in different ways.
The question of whether ordinary citizens incorporate party stances into their democratic beliefs is crucial in the current context of escalating polarization. Whereas the conventional account posits that heightened party competition improves satisfaction with democracy and turnout, much less is known about the nexus between democratic views, electoral behavior, and party system polarization. This paper contends that democratic views mediate the relationship between party polarization and voting. It is argued that party polarization on cultural, economic, and democratic issues has a differential influence on vote choice depending on the democratic model citizens support.
Two sets of hypotheses are scrutinized. First, consistent with studies stressing that populist voters are disgruntled with liberal democracy and responsive to issues such as social protection or the renewal of democratic institutions (protest thesis), it is anticipated that citizens supporting the liberal model are more inclined to vote for non-populist parties (H1a), while their counterparts supporting the social model are more likely to vote for radical-left populist parties (H2a). Similarly, those supportive of the populist model are more prone to vote for radical-right populist parties (H3a).
Second, drawing on the notion that party polarization enhances citizens' propensity to follow elite cues (responsiveness thesis), the three trends above are expected to be more pronounced when there is a high level of party polarization on cultural issues (associated with cleavages inherent in liberal democracy) (H1b), economic issues (linked to social democracy) (H2b), and democratic issues (related to popular sovereignty) (H3b).
Data from ESS 10 are first combined with expert data from the PopuList to assess how democratic views shape electoral behavior. Multilevel CFA and logistic models provide evidence that democratic views exert a specific effect, with Europeans holding strong liberal views more likely to vote for non-populist parties. Conversely, those holding strong social or populist views more likely cast a ballot for a populist party and abstain from voting (in line with the apathy thesis).
CHES data are then used to measure party polarization on cultural, economic and democratic issues at the country level. The second set of hypotheses receives mixed empirical support. While the probability of voting for populist parties increases more with party polarization on democratic issues amoung citizens holding populist views, cross-level interactions between party polarization and democratic views are less significant when examining the impact of liberal and social issues on electoral behavior.
All in all, democratic views are a route to voting but they play to the hilt when political competition touches upon popular sovereignty and involves the populist model of democracy.
Democratic views and voting behavior
1University of A Coruña, Spain; 2Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; 3Universidad Carlos III, Madrid
One of the main transformations of the European political landscape since 2012 is the electoral success of non-mainstream parties, and the resulting changes for national party systems. These changes might be potentially consequential for the Europeans’ views and evaluations of democracy. Importantly, the democratic consensus of the post-Cold War order might be challenged (Nations in Transit 2020), because antagonistic views of democracy gain strength in opposite sides of the political spectrum. For this reason, in this article we explore the relationship between views of democracy and vote choice. What are the views of democracy of the constituencies of different types of parties in 2021? Do electoral winners and losers defend specific views of democracy? And, has the linkage between citizens’ democratic views and voting behavior changed in the last 10 years? Using data from ESS Round 10 we test if the constituencies of each type of parties differ not only in the extent to which they support the liberal model of democracy but also some of its alternatives like the social or the populist models of democracy or other illiberal options. In addition, we assess whether support for the different models of democracy has changed since 2012/2013 across electoral constituencies. This allows us to discuss whether the potential changes in democratic views relate to recent transformations in party systems.