15:30 - 17:45
Friday-Panel
Chair/s:
Andreas C Goldberg
Discussant/s:
Pedro Riera
Meeting Room N

Bernd Schlipphak, Constantin Schäfer, Oliver Treib
When are blame games effective? How blame and source effects shape citizens’ acceptance of EU sanctions against democratic backsliding

Lea Kaftan, Theresa Gessler
Who cares? Conceptions of what democracy means and acquisition to democratic backsliding in Germany and Poland

Carsten Wegscheider, Marlene Mauk
Defenders of democracy? How democratic attitudes relate to political participation

Kathrin Ackermann
The Activation of Norms – Revisiting the Link between Citizenship Norms and Participation
Defenders of democracy? How democratic attitudes relate to political participation
Carsten Wegscheider 1, Marlene Mauk 2
1 University of Salzburg
2 GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences

Recent incidents of democratic backsliding have brought renewed attention to the significance of citizens’ views of and attitudes towards democracy for the stability of democratic regimes. Yet, while political-culture research typically places great importance on citizens’ democratic attitudes, we know little about how democratic attitudes contribute to protecting democracy. Although the protection of democracy may rest on citizens actually acting upon their (democratic) attitudes, few studies have examined how democratic attitudes relate to political behavior. Our contribution is therefore interested in examining the relationship between democratic attitudes and political behavior. Prior research has shown that democratic attitudes typically relate to increased political participation, but these studies have not taken into account the regime context: how do variations in democratic quality affect the relationship between democratic attitudes and political behavior? Distinguishing between institutionalized and non-institutionalized political participation, we suggest diverging effects: On the one hand, in high-quality democracies, we expect citizens to express their democratic attitudes primarily through formal political participation as they conceive the democratic process as the primary means to participate in politics. In contrast, in low-quality democracies, we expect citizens with more democratic attitudes to engage primarily in informal political participation as they may find formal political participation to be a less and less viable venue to express their political preferences and to increasingly see the need for protest action. Combining survey data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study (2017-2020) with data from the V-Dem project, we test these hypotheses for democracies around the world.