Does the Public Respond to Threats to Democracy?

The Science of Politics · Feb 9, 2022 · 39m

Advanced democracies are backsliding. Can we count on the public to save them? Democratic principles may be widely shared, but that does not mean citizens respond as we might hope. Christopher Claassen finds that publics around the world react against advances in liberal democracy by becoming less favorable toward democracy but become more supportive of democracy when it declines. Sara Wallace Goodman finds that citizens in the U.S. and Europe share strong notions of democratic citizenship but only people on some partisan sides respond to threats from polarization and foreign interference…