Affective polarisation and punishing democratic violators

Organised by

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

In many countries around the world, political rights, civil liberties, and free and fair elections are under assault. At the same time, citizens’ increasing levels of antipathy and negative sentiments towards supporters of opposing parties, a phenomenon coined as affective polarisation, has been on the rise around the globe as well. Could affective polarisation be a causal factor for democratic erosion? While there are several theoretical conjectures in this direction, evidence on affective polarisation’s detrimental consequences for democratic governance has been rather mixed. In this paper we draw on a candidate choice conjoint experiment embedded into a nationally representative survey fielded in Turkey. We find that exogenous decreases in individuals’ affective polarisation levels lead them to punish political candidates who violate democratic norms more than respondents in the control group. Our research suggests that affective polarisation might play a causal role in democratic backsliding by making partisans less likely to punish politicians who violate democratic norms.

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