The Majoritarian Threat to Liberal Democracy

Incumbents often seek to wield power in ways that are formally legal but informally proscribed. Why do voters endorse these power grabs? Prior literature focuses on polarization. We propose instead that many voters are majoritarian, in that they view popularly elected leaders’ actions as inherently...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of experimental political science Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 36 - 45
Main Authors Grossman, Guy, Kronick, Dorothy, Levendusky, Matthew, Meredith, Marc
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.01.2022
Subjects
Democracy
Experiments
Governors
Judicial appointments
Militancy
Norms
Partisanship
Polarization
Political science
Population
Populism
Principles
Public officials
Research Article
Threats
Voters
United States > US
populism
polarization
Democratic erosion
democratic backsliding
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Summary:Incumbents often seek to wield power in ways that are formally legal but informally proscribed. Why do voters endorse these power grabs? Prior literature focuses on polarization. We propose instead that many voters are majoritarian, in that they view popularly elected leaders’ actions as inherently democratic – even when those actions undermine liberal democracy. We find support for this claim in two original survey experiments, arguing that majoritarians’ desire to give wide latitude to elected officials is an important but understudied threat to liberal democracy in the United States.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:2052-2630
2052-2649
DOI:10.1017/XPS.2020.44