3: Measuring and Defining Public Support for Democracy and Autocracy

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According to Russell Dalton, the most pressing challenge to contemporary democracies comes from their own citizens. They have grown ‘distrustful of politicians, sceptical about democratic institutions and disillusioned about how the democratic process functions’ (Dalton, 2004, 1). Democratic backsliding does not happen without some citizen support of it (Luo and Przeworski, 2019).

One of the themes of this book is the argument that citizens are increasingly willing to support authoritarian leadership. This is not to say that democracy is not the most popular type of regime around the world; it still is. However, there are trends in public opinion that are concerning for democracy (Foa and Mounk, 2017; Kendall-Taylor et al, 2019). To help understand what these trends are, this chapter first lays out what we mean by public opinion and how public opinion is measured. We then use surveys from around the world to map the patterns of democratic and authoritarian values in democracies. Is democracy really in danger or just facing a predictable dip in support?

We then examine one of the key trends measured by public opinion surveys: polarization. We explain how polarization is problematic for democracy. With rising polarization, some individuals in democracies are increasingly inclined to support leadership that represents their point of view, even if it means that democracy might suffer. While Chapter 4 will explain other factors that drive support for authoritarianism, rising polarization helps explain how backsliding can happen in advanced democracies. Finally, we look at political participation rates and explore the counter-intuitive trend of high levels of polarization coinciding with high levels of apathy.

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