Parties with left‐wing positions on economic issues and right‐wing (i.e., authoritarian) positions on cultural issues have been historically largely absent from the supply side of the policy space of Western European democracies. Yet, many citizens hold such left‐authoritarian issue attitudes. This article addresses the hypotheses that left‐authoritarian citizens are less likely to vote, less satisfied with the democratic process and have lower levels of political trust when there is a left‐authoritarian supply gap. Using data for 14 Western European countries from the European Social Survey 2008 in the main analysis, it is shown that left‐authoritarians are less likely to vote and exhibit lower levels of satisfaction with democracy and political trust. A supplementary analysis of national election studies from Finland before and after the electoral breakthrough of the left‐authoritarian True Finns Party in 2011 indicates that whether left‐authoritarians participate less and believe less in the efficacy of voting is contingent on the presence of a strong left‐authoritarian party. This study illuminates how constrained party supply in a two‐dimensional policy space can affect voter turnout as well as political support, and has broader implications for the potential further rise of left‐authoritarian challenger parties.

How much do citizens support artificial intelligence (AI) in government and politics at different levels of decision‐making authority and to what extent is this AI support associated with citizens’ conceptions of democracy? Using original survey data from Germany, the analysis shows that people are overall sceptical toward using AI in the political realm. The findings suggest that how much citizens endorse democracy as liberal democracy as opposed to several of its disfigurations matters for AI support, but only in high‐level politics. While a stronger commitment to liberal democracy is linked to lower support for AI, the findings contradict the idea that a technocratic notion of democracy lies behind greater acceptance of political AI uses. Acceptance is higher only among those holding reductionist conceptions of democracy which embody the idea that whatever works to accommodate people's views and preferences is fine. Populists, in turn, appear to be against AI in political decision making.

Scholars increasingly raise concerns about the alleged detrimental impact of affective polarization on citizens’ democratic attitudes. Yet, prior studies on the relationship between affective polarization and democratic support have yielded mixed results: Whereas some scholars report evidence that affective polarization erodes citizens’ support for democracy, others report null findings. In this research note, we posit that one relevant explanation for these mixed results is that the relationship between affective polarization and democratic support is not linear, but rather negatively curvilinear (i.e., an inverted U‐shape). Though extreme levels of affective polarization may harm citizens’ democratic commitments, a moderate amount of affective polarization can strengthen democratic support by heightening the political stakes and stimulating democratic involvement. Employing generalized additive modelling on data from the CNEP collected in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we show strong and robust support for this negatively curvilinear pattern. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the dynamics between affective polarization and democratic support, as well as for the recommended estimation strategies of future studies that aim to explore this relationship.

Earlier research has shown a strong connection between anti‐immigration attitudes and political trust in Western Europe. In this research note, we examine if nativists’ low levels of specific political support translate into a more general scepticism about democracy as a system of government. Using comparative data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and the European Values Study (EVS), we investigate the relationship between nativist attitudes and several indicators of principled, or diffuse, support for democracy. The findings testify to a nativist divide in diffuse political support. We find a systematic and significant difference in support for democracy between strong nativists and other citizens. West European nativists are less likely than other citizens to view their country as democratic. They also tend to perceive living in a democracy as less important than people with a more positive outlook on immigrants. Moreover, and maybe more worrying, nativists express lower levels support for democracy in relation to non‐democratic regime alternatives, that is, they are less likely to be “principled” democrats. The found negative associations remain also after controlling for nativists’ levels of specific support, which indicates that there may be a more fundamental opposition between nativism and diffuse support for democracy than previously acknowledged. We believe that these findings have important implications for research trying to understand challenges to liberal democracy in a time when nativist parties have been successful in politicizing immigration and continue to score electoral victories all over Europe.

This study examines citizens’ support for state surveillance, contingent upon factors related to policy design and the context of implementation. While most people want to live in a secure environment, we argue in this study that the support of policies to reach this goal depends on their necessity, extensiveness and reliability. Results from survey experiments in four European countries show that citizens are ready to approve the introduction of far‐reaching state surveillance that includes measures of facial recognition and motion detection. Public support is further enhanced if these measures are to be targeted at potential criminals, rather than at all citizens (i.e., policy extensiveness), as well as if a safety threat is salient (i.e., policy necessity). Concerns about data security reduce support (i.e., policy reliability). While these conditions matter for the support of specific policies, they do not influence how trustworthy citizens consider government and other political authorities to be.

Academics and practitioners are increasingly interested in deliberative minipublics and whether these can address widespread dissatisfaction with contemporary politics. While optimism seems to prevail, there is also talk that the use of minipublics may backfire. When the government disregards a minipublic's recommendations, this could lead to more dissatisfaction than not asking for its advice in the first place. Using an online survey experiment in Belgium (n = 3,102), we find that, compared to a representative decision-making process, a minipublic tends to bring about higher political support when its recommendations are fully adopted by the government, whereas it generates lower political support when its recommendations are not adopted. This study presents novel insights into whether and when the use of minipublics may alleviate or aggravate political dissatisfaction among the public at large.

Accepting defeat in the aftermath of elections is crucial for the stability of democracies. But in times of intense polarization, the voluntary consent of electoral losers seems less obvious. In this paper, I study whether affective and perceived ideological polarization amplify the winner–loser gap in political support. Using multilevel growth curve modelling on pre and post‐election panel data from the British Election Study Internet Panel collected during the 2015 and 2019 UK general elections, I show that the winner–loser gap is indeed more pronounced amongst voters with higher levels of affective and perceived ideological polarization. Moreover, the results illustrate that polarized voters experience a stark decrease in their support for the political system following their electoral loss. Given the high and, in some Western democracies, rising polarization levels, these findings have important implications for losers’ consent and the stability of democracies in election times.

A previous article in this journal presented a conceptualisation of the political legitimacy of the state and its operationalisation for 72 countries c. 2000. This article provides an updated dataset of state legitimacy for 52 countries c. 2008 using the same conceptualisation. It presents a brief discussion of the comparative results of the two datasets.

Model European Union (MEU) is a simulation of European politics that aims to familiarise young Europeans with the decision-making process of the European Union (EU). Participants simulate the cooperation between the Commission, the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of the EU in the ordinary legislative procedure. About 190 people annually participate at MEU Strasbourg, which takes place on the premises of the EP. This article uses quasi-experimental panel data from surveys with participants of MEU 2012 to test the impact of the simulation conference. While most empirical research on the effects of political simulations addresses the educational effectiveness of classroom simulations, this article tries to answer a research question with a new focus on political attitudes: Do EU simulations influence European identity and political support of the EU?

Why is the winner‐loser gap in political support wider in some countries and narrower in others? Previous studies have focused on how the input side of political systems (i.e., the institutional structure) affects the winner‐loser gap. This study suggests that one should also consider the output side (i.e., the quality of political process and economic performance) and posits that two mechanisms – rational and psychological – can explain how output factors affect the gap. Going beyond previous research, this article also considers whether contextual characteristics explain the variation in the gap not only between countries, but also within them. Applying mixed models to survey data from 30 European countries between 2002 and 2015, the study finds that the differences in support between winners and losers across countries are smaller in consensual systems, as in these contexts the support among losers is higher. However, changes in the institutional structure do not explain the over‐time variation in the winner‐loser gap. Moreover, increasing quality of process and economic performance do not attenuate the gap across countries and over time, as they affect positively the political support of both winners and losers. The study shows which contextual factors explain the winner‐loser gap and points to the conditions that increase losers’ consent, which is a crucial element of democratic legitimacy.

It is argued in this article that citizens in democracies use their subjective well‐being (SWB) as an evaluative criterion when deciding how willing they are to support and comply with government dictates (political system support). When life is satisfactory, government authorities are rewarded with support, when it is not, citizens punish authorities by withholding their support. To make sense of the relationship, it is suggested that citizens act as if they have signed a happiness contract with ‘those in power’. In support of this argument, comparative survey data shows that SWB predicts attitudes on political system support across country contexts and under strong control conditions. Establishing that the relationship is causal, panel data documents that attitudes on political system support can be undermined following the termination of a close personal relationship, and that the causal effect is mediated via changes in SWB. Finally, as predicted, the happiness‐support relationship is weaker among individuals who are high on spirituality/religiousness and attribute blame for external events to both worldly and non‐worldly powers.

What shapes the ways in which citizens participate in politics? This article investigates the association between private homeownership and the forms of citizens’ political behaviors using a Chinese nationwide social survey. Exploiting the abolishment of the welfare housing system in the late 1990s as a quasi-natural experiment, I find that owning a home and experiencing home value appreciation increases citizens’ willingness for political engagement as well as participatory behaviors through formal channels, but reduces their confrontational behaviors towards government such as participation in protests. Further evidence on political attitudes suggests that homeowners are more critical of government performance, yet they report higher political trust in the state and a stronger preference for maintaining the status quo. These findings highlight the critical role of asset ownership in preventing conflict and promoting stability by shaping the political behaviors and beliefs of citizens.

In the study of politics, many theoretical accounts assume that we are experiencing a ‘crisis of democracy’, with declining levels of political trust. While some empirical studies support this account, others disagree and report ‘trendless fluctuations’. We argue that these empirical ambiguities are based on analytical confusion: whether trust is declining depends on the institution, country, and period in question. We clarify these issues and apply our framework to an empirical analysis that is unprecedented in geographic and temporal scope: we apply Bayesian dynamic latent trait models to uncover underlying trends in data on trust in six institutions collated from 3,377 surveys conducted by 50 projects in 143 countries between 1958 and 2019. We identify important differences between countries and regions, but globally we find that trust in representative institutions has generally been declining in recent decades, whereas trust in ‘implementing’ institutions has been stable or rising.

Evangelicals arguably constitute an unexpected base of support for Donald Trump. One plausible account holds that evangelicals supported Trump reluctantly, backing him not because they strongly favored him, but rather because they viewed him as the least objectionable candidate. This perspective suggests a possible enthusiasm gap: among Donald Trump's supporters, nonevangelicals were more zealous while evangelicals were more tepid. We examine this account using data from March 2019, just past the midpoint of Trump's presidency, a period when any lack of enthusiasm with Trump among portions of his base should have been discernible. Our expansive analytical strategy, using OLS and matching, explores whether evangelicals offered Donald Trump more lukewarm support than did nonevangelicals, with support operationalized in six ways. Across 36 tests, no evidence of an enthusiasm gap between evangelicals and nonevangelicals is detected. Seen both in absolute terms and relative to nonevangelicals, evangelicals offered Donald Trump fervent support.

Research on policy experimentation has mainly focused on central–local relations; scholars have paid little attention to the interaction between policy experimentation and the public. We argue that policy experimentation can be used by decision makers as an instrument to communicate with the public, facilitating the building of a social consensus regarding controversial policies. We evaluate the effects of the Chinese government's policy experimentation efforts to promote shared responsibility between the state and individuals for the urban pension system on the public's regime support. Evidence from two rounds of a nationwide survey conducted before and after the policy experiment indicates that the policy experimentation has significantly contributed to citizens’ acceptance of their individual welfare responsibility. Moreover, the image-building of governmental responsibility via official news, with varied intensity across regions, consolidates the political trust of residents while posing a challenge to local government credibility in the long run.

This paper sheds light on the prevalence and the correlates of citizen support for liberal democracy and four of its deformations: a populist, a technocratic, a post-democratic, and a majoritarian-relativist conception of democracy. Using original survey data from a representative German online panel, the findings provide systematic evidence on the multifaceted nature of citizens’ democratic preferences. Only few citizens are, for instance, populist without also being liberal democrats, and many endorse two or more deformations of liberal democracy simultaneously. Yet, these forms of overlap are not arbitrary but conform to conceptually posited relative affinities between these deformations. The examined conceptions of democracy furthermore differ in their associations with political support, ideology, education, and political interest. In addition to offering novel empirical insights, the findings also highlight why some measures may underestimate the complexity of democratic preferences.

This study examined if and for whom prosecution of politicians for hate speech undermines support for the legal system and democracy. Three research designs were combined to investigate the case of Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who was convicted for hate speech against minorities in 2016. First, an experiment showed that observing a guilty verdict decreased support among ‘assimilationists’ who oppose the multicultural society. This deterioration of support was found among the entire group of assimilationists, regardless of whether they voted for Wilders. Secondly, a quasi-experiment demonstrated that assimilationists who were interviewed after Wilders' conviction indicated less support than those who were interviewed before the verdict and compared to a pre-test. Thirdly, a nine-year panel study suggested that these effects accumulate into long-term discontent. This case therefore demonstrates that hate speech prosecution can damage the democratic system it is intended to defend.

There is a growing interest in analyzing what citizens think about democracy. However, gauging citizens’ opinions about a complex concept such as democracy might be hindered by the apparent low levels of political sophistication of mass publics. This paper contributes to the emerging literature on citizens’ views and evaluations of democracy by analyzing to what extent ordinary citizens are capable of developing structured opinions about democracy and its constitutive principles. For this purpose, the paper adapts Converse’s notion of political belief systems to analyze the articulation of individuals’ democracy belief systems (DBS). The first goal of this paper is to conceptualize and operationalize the main components of individuals’ DBS: cognitive availability, horizontal constraint, and vertical constraint. Drawing on data from the sixth round of the European Social Survey, the second goal is to describe the articulation of DBS in Europe. The third and final aim of this paper is to trace the most relevant individual- and country-level correlates of the articulation of the three components of DBS. In line with recent findings about political belief systems in other policy domains, the results indicate that most Europeans have coherently structured attitudes about democracy. However, even if the results imply that Europeans have a relatively articulated DBS, the empirical analysis also reveals some individual- and country-level variation in the articulation of specific components of DBS.