Reconciling Citizens with the Tradeoffs of Democracy: Attitudes Toward Democracy Under Rising Politicization

Introduction

Democracies involve tradeoffs since all their desirable qualities cannot be simultaneously maximized. Hard choices must be made in order to balance democratic principles such as popular sovereignty and the rule of law, or freedom and political equality.

The Challenge of Tradeoffs

These tradeoffs would not be problematic as long as citizens and political leaders were open to compromise and accept that democracy requires a delicate balancing of virtues. The politicization of these tradeoffs in recent events such as Brexit or Poland’s judicial reform suggests that this is likely not the case.

Research Gaps

However, we still know very little about the positions of citizens and parties regarding democratic tradeoffs. Key questions include:

1. How do these tradeoffs contribute to citizens’ increasing discontent with democracy?
2. How might the rising politicization of the tradeoffs of democracy exacerbate these dynamics?
3. Is it possible to curb this process?

Project Objectives

To investigate these questions, this project:

1. Elaborates a conceptual map of democratic tradeoffs and empirically examines citizens’ preferences and parties’ positions on them.
2. Analyzes the determinants of citizens’ democratic tradeoff preferences, and how the interplay between these preferences and parties’ politicization of these tradeoffs affects individuals’ support and satisfaction with democracy.
3. Examines how citizens can be reconciled with the idea that some democratic qualities cannot be simultaneously maximized.

Methodology

The empirical analysis focuses on 15 European countries and implements an integrative multi-method approach combining:

• Cross-sectional and panel surveys
• Content analysis
• Experiments

Contribution to Political Culture

The proposed project breaks new theoretical and methodological ground in the study of political culture. It brings the inherent tensions of democracy to the forefront and develops new tools for the measurement of tradeoff preferences and their consequences.