Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States
Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States
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DOI：
10.1017/s0003055420000052
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发表时间：
2020-05-01
影响因子：
6.8
通讯作者：
Svolik, Milan W.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Graham, Matthew H.;Svolik, Milan W.
美国对民主的支持是否足以阻止民选政客的不民主行为？我们开发了一个将公众作为民主制衡的模型，并使用两种经验策略对其进行评估：一种是原创的、具有全国代表性的候选人选择实验，其中一些政客采取违反关键民主原则的立场；另一种是发生在蒙大拿州2017年美国众议院特别选举期间的自然实验。我们的研究设计允许我们推断美国人愿意为其他有效但潜在冲突的考虑而折衷民主原则，如政治意识形态、党派忠诚和政策偏好。我们发现，美国公众作为民主制衡的可行性明显有限：只有一小部分美国人在他们的选举选择中优先考虑民主原则，他们这样做的倾向在几个两极分化指标上正在下降，包括党派之争的强度、政策极端主义和候选人政纲分歧。我们的发现呼应了关于政治温和和全面分裂对民主稳定的重要性的经典论点，并突显了两极分化对民主的危险。
Is support for democracy in the United States robust enough to deter undemocratic behavior by elected politicians? We develop a model of the public as a democratic check and evaluate it using two empirical strategies: an original, nationally representative candidate-choice experiment in which some politicians take positions that violate key democratic principles, and a natural experiment that occurred during Montana's 2017 special election for the U.S. House. Our research design allows us to infer Americans' willingness to trade-off democratic principles for other valid but potentially conflicting considerations such as political ideology, partisan loyalty, and policy preferences. We find the U.S. public's viability as a democratic check to be strikingly limited: only a small fraction of Americans prioritize democratic principles in their electoral choices, and their tendency to do so is decreasing in several measures of polarization, including the strength of partisanship, policy extremism, and candidate platform divergence. Our findings echo classic arguments about the importance of political moderation and cross-cutting cleavages for democratic stability and highlight the dangers that polarization represents for democracy.