Guardians of Democracy or Passive Bystanders? A Conjoint Experiment on Elite Transgressions of Democratic Norms

• Author: Inga A.-L. Saikkonen,Henrik Serup Christensen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211073592
• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Date: 01 March 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2023, Vol. 76(1) 127–142

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211073592

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Guardians of Democracy or Passive

Bystanders? A Conjoint Experiment on

Elite Transgressions of Democratic Norms

Inga A.-L. Saikkonen

1,

*and Henrik Serup Christensen

2,

*

Abstract

Emerging literature shows that citizens in established democracies do not unconditionally support central democratic

principles when asked to weigh them against co-partisanship or favored policy positions. However, these studies are

conducted in highly polarized contexts, and it remains unclear whether the underlying mechanisms also operate in more

consensual contexts. Furthermore, it is unclear whether “critical citizens”or satisf‌ied democrats are more eager to

support democratic principles. We study these questions with evidence from a conjoint experiment conducted in Finland

(n= 1030), an established democracy with high levels of democratic satisfaction and a consensual political culture. We

examine how transgressions of two central democratic norms, the legitimacy of political opposition and the inde-

pendence of the judiciary, affect leader favorability. We also explore how these differ acro ss ideological and policy

congruence and across levels of political disaffection. Our results show that some segments of the Finnish population are

willing to condone authoritarian behavior if this brings them political benef‌its. Furthermore, we f‌ind tha t satisf‌ied rather

than “critical”citizens are more likely to sanction such behavior. These f‌indings suggest that dangers of democratic

deconsolidation may appear even in consensus democracies with relatively low levels of political polarization.

Keywords

democratic deconsolidation, democratic transgressions, political dissatisfaction, policy congruence, conjoint experiments

Introduction

Public support for democracy is essential for democratic

stability (Dahl 1956,Lipset 1959,Easton 1965). Recent

scholarship has debated whether voters in established

democracies are increasingly willing to support more

authoritarian political alternatives to democracy, but the

f‌indings are very mixed (Foa and Mounk 2016,2017 vs.

Alexander and Welzel 2017,Norris 2017,Voeten 2017).

Most recent studies have concluded that even though

voters in established democracies are very critical on how

democracy functions in their countries, they are still

supportive of core democratic principles and continue to

endorse democracy as a political system (Norris 1999,

2017,Wuttke et al. 2020).

Yet, democratic stability also requires that people are

willing to translate their pro-democratic attitudes into

practice, by being willing to defend democracy against the

transgressions of political leaders (Weingast 1997,2005,

Fearon 2011, for a discussion, see also Luo and

Przeworski 2019). Indeed, classical liberal democratic

theory stresses the need for citizen vigilance against “the

potential abuse of power by the state”(Norris 2011, 245).

Alarmed by the rise of populist and authoritarian politi-

cians in the world an emerging line of scholarship has

begun to examine whether citizens in established de-

mocracies are willing to condemn democratic transgres-

sions by politicians, especially when this means

prioritizing democratic principles against favored policy

goals or co-partisanship (Carey et al. 2020,Graham and

Svolik 2020). Most prominently, Graham and Svolik

(2020) found that when voters are asked to weigh their

support for democratic principles against partisan interests

1

Social Science Research Institute and the Department of Political

Science,

˚

Abo Akademi University, Finland

2

Department of Political Science,

˚

Abo Akademi University, Finland

*Both authors contributed equally

Corresponding Author:

Henrik Serup Christensen, Department of Political Science,

˚

Abo

Akademi Ekonomisk-statsvetenskapliga fakulteten, F¨

anriksgatan 3a,

˚

Abo

20500, Finland.

Email: henrik.christensen@abo.f‌i

or policy concerns, they care more about them than

democratic norms (for more nuanced f‌indings, see Carey

et al. 2020). These f‌indings are in line with earlier studies

that have shown that citizens take into consideration

multiple issue areas when evaluating the conduct of

politicians, and do not always punish “malfeasant”pol-

iticians if supporting these politicians brings adjacent

benef‌its (Klaˇ

snja and Tucker 2013,Franchino and

Zucchini 2015,Breitenstein 2019, see also Singer 2018).

We contribute to both literatures with the help of data

from a conjoint survey experiment embedded in a na-

tionally representative survey carried out in Finland in

May and June 2020. First, building on Carey et al. (2020)

and Graham and Svolik (2020), we examine whether

Finnish citizens support core democratic principles, es-

pecially when they are asked to weigh them against other

important dimensions, such as ideological or policy

congruence. Conjoint experiments are particularly suited

for exploring these questions as they enable us to probe

respondents’attitudes toward democracy while avoiding

problems with social desirability bias that may affect

answers to direct survey questions (Hainmueller et al.

2014,Svolik 2019 and 2020). Moreover, the experimental

design allows us to explore the multidimensional choices

that citizens make when assessing the behavior of (un)

democratic politicians and allows us to probe citizens’

“actual”commitment to democratic values as opposed to

their “stated”preferences measured in comparative surveys

(see Svolik 2019 and 2020,Graham and Svolik 2020).

Our results show that most Finnish citizens continue to

support core principles of democracy. However, worry-

ingly, we also f‌ind that even in Finland, with high levels of

democratic satisfaction (Rapeli and Koskimaa 2020) and a

consensual political culture (Karvonen 2014), some

people are willing to ignore blatant transgressions of

democratic principles when there is ideological and policy

goal alignment. The extant literature on voters’reactions

to democratic transgressions has examined these “trade-

off effects”mostly in highly politically polarized contexts,

such as the US and Venezuela (Carey et al. 2020,Graham

and Svolik 2020,Svolik 2020). These studies have

suggested that individual-level political polarization is

partially driving the unwillingness of voters to condemn

democratic norm violations by politicians (McCoy and

Somer 2019,Svolik 2019 and 2020,Graham and Svolik

2020). Our empirical setting allows us to examine voter

reactions to democratic norm violations by politicians in a

polity characterized by high degrees of social trust

(S¨

oderlund 2019) and relatively low ideological and af-

fective polarization (Isotalo et al. 2020,Reiljan 2020,

Wagner 2021). Yet we f‌ind that segments of the Finnish

population are willing to make signif‌icant trade-offs be-

tween democratic principles and policy concerns. This

suggests that these concerns may not be purely driven by

political polarization but may be more general to political

behavior in established democracies.

We also examine differences across levels of political

disaffection and thus contribute to the debate on the

linkage between democratic disaffection and support for

democracy. Toour knowledge, this has not been examined

with experimental evidence previously. We f‌ind that

citizens with higher levels of political trust and democratic

satisfaction are more likely to defend core democratic

principles. This suggests that citizens with high political

satisfaction rather than the “critical citizens”(see Norris

1999) are the true guardians of democracy.

Theoretical Expectations: Citizens and

Democratic Transgressions

Democracy is a multidimensional concept. Mettler and

Lieberman (2020) argue that the functioning of modern

representative democracy is based on four essential di-

mensions: free and fair elections, respecting the civil and

political rights of the population, respecting the legitimacy

of the political opposition, and respecting the system of

separation of powers and the rule of law. The latter two

dimensions, respecting the legitimacy of political oppo-

sition and respecting the independence of the judiciary,

have been especially under attack in many European

established democracies, and we therefore focus on

measuring citizen responses to the trampling of these two

key democratic norms.

First, we examine citizens’reactions to politicians

breaking the democratic norm of respecting the legitimacy

of the political opposition. Modern representative de-

mocracy is based on free competition between politicians

for the support of the voters (Schumpeter 1942). The

functioning of representative democracy thus entails that

politicians respect the legitimacy of their political op-

ponents and do not prevent each other from governing or

campaigning (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018,Mettler and

Lieberman 2020). Building on the work of Juan Linz

(1978) Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) argued that toleration

for or encouragement of violence against political op-

position are warning signs that can help to identify pol-

iticians with authoritarian tendencies. We f‌irst examine

how Finnish citizens react to politicians seeking to restrict

political competition by exhorting the use of political

violence against their opponents. The literature on social

norms and informal institutions suggests that citizens

should punish transgressions of “socially shared norms”

such as basic democratic principles (Helmke and Levitsky

2004). Finnish voters report one of the highest levels of

democratic satisfaction in Europe, and the level of sat-

isfaction has remained rather stable over time (Karvonen,

2014;Kestil¨

a-Kekkonen 2015,Rapeli and Koskimaa

2020). Overall, we expect Finnish citizens to condemn

128 Political Research Quarterly 76(1)