PI: Sirianne Dahlum

Project members: Tore Wig, Daniel Goldstein, Alexander Wuttke, Anja Neundorf

Funding: Norwegian Research Council (Young Research Talent Grant), 2022-2027

Overview: Current processes of democratic erosion are often orchestrated by elected political executives, who gradually concentrate power in their own hands. In many instances, attempts at power-grabbing have been confronted with fierce resistance by citizens seeking to defend democracy. Other times, citizens have largely stayed silent in the face of democratic erosion, and aspiring autocrats have remained highly popular even after restricting democracy.

This project asks: When and why will citizens defend democracy from attacks by aspiring autocrats? To answer this, we will focus on the cognitive processes through which individuals react to undemocratic behavior and decisions regarding how to react to hypothetical and real attacks on democracy. We will analyse how deeply committed citizens’ really are to democratic principles -- including how willing they are to trade off democracy against other political preferences and concerns, and how sensitive their preferences are to social environments and social norms. This will be done drawing on a combination of survey and lab- experiments - in stable democracies as well as countries experiencing autocratization.

The project will also analyse why and when citizens participate in mass mobilization against leaders with anti-democratic behavior, drawing data on mass mobilization events and sequences of democratic erosion across the world.

See below for more information about onoing work.

Published papers:

Claassen, Christopher and Ackermann, Kathrin and Bertsou, Eri and Borba, Lucas and Carlin, Ryan E and Cavari, Amnon and Dahlum, Sirianne and Gherghina, Sergiu and Hawkins, Darren and Lelkes, Yphtach et al (2024). Conceptualizing and measuring support for democracy: A new approach. Forthcoming in Comparative Political Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140241259458

Working papers:

Dahlum, Sirianne, Torbjørn Hanson, Åshild Johnsen, Andreas Kotsadam and Alexander Wuttke. Is Support for Authoritarian Rule Contagious? Evidence from Field and Survey Experiments (link), under review.

Neundorf, A., Dahlum, S., Frederiksen, K. V. S., & Ozturk, A. (2024). The appeal of electoral autocracy: Assessing citizens’ revealed societal preferences (link), under review.

Work in progess:

Dahlum, Sirianne, Tore Wig, Kaja Sparre Bakke and Daniel Goldstein. Elite Commitments to Democracy: Experimental Evidence from Norway" (see here for current version of pre-analysis plan).

Dahlum, Sirianne and Daniel Goldstein. Social norms and commitments to democracy: Evidence from lab experiments.