How Ordinary Citizens Detect and Evaluate Democratic Regression

In recent years, some democratically elected politicians in Western democracies have attacked and sought to undermine core democratic institutions such as voting rights, media freedom, and the independence of judges. In this regard, it is often argued that ordinary citizens will act as a strong bulwark against such developments and protect democracy. However, little is known about the ability of citizens to detect and evaluate such democratic backsliding. In a conjoint experiment with representative samples of 1000 respondents in the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Denmark, and Spain, I test citizens’ ability to detect incremental regression on different dimensions of democracy: the fairness of elections (e.g., voter registration, campaign finance, and availability of polling stations), civil liberties (e.g., freedom of expression, religion, assembly, and the media), and the rule of law (e.g., the nomination and independence of judges). Specifically, I present several fictional newspaper articles describing the occurrence of democratic backsliding in the respondents’ home country on these different dimensions of democracy, and asses both whether they are able to detect democratic regression at all, and whether they are more sensitive to some forms of regression than others. Very preliminary results (the conjoint analysis has not yet been undertaken) suggest that citizens are indeed able to detect democratic backsliding, but mostly so on the electoral dimension. However, the preliminary findings also reveal that when political leaders justify such democratic regression in accordance with respondents’ political views, citizens are less likely to detect and disprove of democratic regression. In total, this implies that ordinary citizens are indeed able to detect some forms of democratic regression, but that political elites are more influential on how citizens evaluate democratic regression than hitherto understood.