New Instruments for Popular Understandings of Democracy

This chapter reviews pertinent research on varying understandings of democracy to assess the empirical challenges in studying this elusive concept and to propose some new survey instruments (i.e., the PUD instruments) with theoretical justification. In particular, it emphasizes the embedded tensions and critical trade-offs as people view and assess democracy and brings such tensions and trade-offs to the center of instrument selection. The chapter further examines the validity and reliability of the PUD instruments using both survey experiments and different psychometric models to establish a solid methodological foundation for subsequent empirical analysis.

Understandings of Democracy

While democracy is popular and still enjoys supremacy in contemporary political discourse with limited challenges from alternatives, it has also been acknowledged that democracy is in crisis. However, if most people love democracy and politicians have to live with democracy, how can democracy be in trouble? Understandings of Democracy examines this puzzling phenomenon, arguing that (1) people hold distinct understandings of democracy; (2) popular conceptions of democracy are significantly shaped by socioeconomic and political contexts; (3) such varying conceptions generate different baselines for people to assess democratic practices and to establish their views of democracy; and (4) such distinct conceptions also drive political participation in different ways. Overall, popular understandings of democracy have critically shaped how citizens respond to authoritarian or populist practices in contemporary politics. Using new survey instruments embedded in the Global Barometer Surveys (GBS), this book highlights the significance and essentialness of how people assess the tradeoffs between key democratic principles and instrumental gains when they conceptualize democracy for comparative research on popular understandings of democracy. Furthermore, weaving together GBS II survey data from seventy-two societies and survey experiments, this book scrutinizes some key micro-dynamics that drive people’s critical political attitudes and behaviors, which are centered on how people understand democracy in different ways. Overall, this book theorizes and demonstrates that, as a critical but underappreciated component of the demand-side dynamics, varying conceptions of democracy offer significant explanatory power for understanding why democracy is in trouble, even when most people profess to love democracy.

Unequal inequalities? How participatory inequalities affect democratic legitimacy

Democratic theorists have long emphasized the importance of participatory equality, i.e. that all citizens should have an equal right to participate. It is still unclear, however, whether ordinary citizens view this principle as central to democracy and how different violations of this principle affect subjective democratic legitimacy. The attitudes of citizens are imperative when it comes to the subjective legitimacy of democratic systems, and it is therefore important to examine how participatory inequalities affect these attitudes. We here contribute to this research agenda with survey experiments embedded in two surveys (n=324, n=840). We here examine 1) whether citizens consider participatory inequality to be an important democratic principle, and 2) how gender and educational inequalities affect subjective legitimacy and the perceived usefulness of the participatory input. The results show that citizens generally consider participatory inequalities to be important, but only gender inequalities affect subjective legitimacy and usefulness. Hence it is important to consider the type of inequality to understand the implications.

Conservatism predicts aversion to consequential Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize society by automating tasks as diverse as driving cars, diagnosing diseases, and providing legal advice. The degree to which AI can improve outcomes in these and other domains depends on how comfortable people are trusting AI for these tasks, which in turn depends on lay perceptions of AI. The present research examines how these critical lay perceptions may vary as a function of conservatism. Using five survey experiments, we find that political conservatism is associated with low comfort with and trust in AI—i.e., with AI aversion. This relationship between conservatism and AI aversion is explained by the link between conservatism and risk perception; more conservative individuals perceive AI as being riskier and are therefore more averse to its adoption. Finally, we test whether a moral reframing intervention can reduce AI aversion among conservatives.

Do constituents know (or care) about the lawmaking effectiveness of their representatives?

Substantial evidence exists that members of the US Congress vary in their lawmaking effectiveness. Less known, however, is whether constituents are sufficiently informed and inclined to hold their representatives accountable, based on their effectiveness. We conduct two separate survey experiments, informing some constituents about lawmakers' effectiveness and comparing their responses to those with the baseline level of information. We find that voters demonstrate little knowledge of their elected officials' lawmaking effectiveness. When presented with objective and credible information about lawmaking effectiveness, however, respondents express greater approval of more effective lawmakers. Effects are strongest among ideological moderates, but are even pronounced among partisans, who approve of effective representatives of the opposing party, and disapprove of ineffective representatives from their own party.

Changes in perceptions of border security influence desired levels of immigration

Security concerns about immigration are on the rise. Many countries respond by fortifying their borders. Yet little is known about the influence of border security measures on perceived threat from immigration. Borders might facilitate group identities and spread fear of outsiders. In contrast, they might enhance citizens' sense of security and control over immigration. We test these claims using survey experiments run on a nationally representative sample of over 1,000 Americans. The findings show that allocating more government resources to border security increases desired levels of immigration. This effect is likely driven by a sense of control over immigration, induced by border security measures even when the number or characteristics of immigrants remain unchanged. Our findings suggest that border controls, which are widely considered as symbols of closure and isolation, can promote openness to immigration.

Sexual Harassment and Candidate Evaluation: Gender and Partisanship Interact to Affect Voter Responses to Candidates Accused of Harassment

Public airing of incidents of sexual harassment have moved abuse from the shadows to the light, spurring mass response in the form of #MeToo and “Time’s Up.” While sexual harassment holds negative valence, election outcomes suggest that not all voters punish leaders accused of harassment. We argue there is systematic variation in how voters respond to candidates accused of harassment because evaluations are made within the context of both partisanship and the gendered issue of sexual harassment. As a result, we expect to find distinct responses across four voter groups—Democratic women and men, and Republican women and men on the specific issue of harassment. We present supporting evidence from two survey experiments and a third associational study to show that Democratic women are most likely to electorally punish sexual harassers. Experimental evidence also shows that Republican men are least likely to electorally punish candidates accused of harassment.

Persuading US White evangelicals to vaccinate for COVID-19: Testing message effectiveness in fall 2020 and spring 2021

The development of COVID-19 vaccines was an important breakthrough for ending the pandemic. However, people refusing to get vaccinated diminish the level of community protection afforded to others. In the United States, White evangelicals have proven to be a particularly difficult group to convince to get vaccinated. Here we investigate whether this group can be persuaded to get vaccinated. To do this, we leverage data from two survey experiments, one fielded prior to approval of COVID-19 vaccines (study 1) and one fielded after approval (study 2). In both experiments, respondents were randomly assigned to treatment messages to promote COVID-19 vaccination. In study 1, we find that a message that emphasizes community interest and reciprocity with an invocation of embarrassment for choosing not to vaccinate is the most effective at increasing uptake intentions, while values-consistent messaging appears to be ineffective. In contrast, in study 2 we observe that this message is no longer effective and that most messages produce little change in vaccine intent. This inconsistency may be explained by the characteristics of White evangelicals who remain unvaccinated vis à vis those who got vaccinated. These results demonstrate the importance of retesting messages over time, the apparent limitations of values-targeted messaging, and document the need to consider heterogeneity even within well-defined populations. This work also cautions against drawing broad conclusions from studies carried out at a single point in time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

American Voters Do Punish Overt Undemocratic Behavior at the Polls: Natural Experimental Evidence from the 2021 Insurrection of the U.S. Capitol

Existing research suggests that overt undemocratic behavior by elected officials is insufficiently punished by American voters to electorally discourage democratic backsliding. Evidence for this proposition comes primarily from hypothetical survey experiments with relatively weak treatments. I test this hypothesis using a natural experiment with a powerful treatment: Donald Trump's incitement of the insurrection of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The insurrection was unexpected to the general public, did not coincide with other events that could plausibly affect public opinion, and occurred while Gallup was conducting a nationally representative survey using random digit dialing. Comparing vote choice intention among respondents that were interviewed just before, and just after, the insurrection occurred suggests that the insurrection caused a 10.8% decline in support for the Republican Party, and an 8.4% increase in support for the Democratic Party. Politicians interested in winning elections have strong incentives to avoid insurrection-like events from occurring.