Downsizing Democracy: Why Ordinary People Acquiesce to Authoritarianism

该项目开发了一个理论框架，解释在位者何时以及为什么成功颠覆民主，并使用跨国数据和一系列调查实验相结合的方式对这一框架进行评估。因此，这项研究促进了关于民主化、选举威权主义和公众对民主的支持的科学知识和研究。该项目的结果将包括关于在位者颠覆民主的跨国国家一级数据和关于公众对民主的支持的调查实验数据。该项目还将为一些研究生助理提供学术培训和研究经验，他们将参与几个国家具有国家代表性的调查实验的设计、执行、分析和数据管理。这个项目的目标是从理论和经验上解决一个关于民主存续的根本问题：我们什么时候才能现实地期望公众能够对民选政客的威权诱惑起到制衡作用？从理论上讲，该项目确定了造成这种脆弱性的一般机制和结构条件：选民愿意为了党派利益而牺牲民主原则，以及整个政体的政治两极分化在实现这种权衡方面的作用。该项目开发了一个博弈论框架，阐明选民在微观层面进行这种权衡的意愿如何导致在位者在宏观层面颠覆民主。对这一框架进行了经验性评估，结合了跨国数据和一系列调查实验，旨在可信地促使选民愿意在一些关键情况下牺牲民主原则，以实现相互竞争的政治目标。调查-实验设计采用候选人选择实验作为一种间接提问技术，同时强调跨国可比性和结构识别。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project develops a theoretical framework that explains when and why incumbents succeed in subverting democracy and evaluates this framework using a combination of cross-country data and a series of survey experiments. The study thus advances scientific knowledge and research on democratization, electoral authoritarianism, and public support for democracy. The results of this project will include cross-national country-level data on the subversion of democracy by incumbents and survey-experimental data on public support for democracy. This project will also provide academic training and research experience for a number of graduate student assistants who will be involved in the design, execution, analysis, and data management of nationally-representative survey experiments in several countries. The goal of this project is to address theoretically and empirically a fundamental question about the survival of democracy: when can we realistically expect the public to serve as a check on the authoritarian temptations of elected politicians? Theoretically, the project identifies a general mechanism and structural conditions that account for this vulnerability: voters' willingness to trade off democratic principles for partisan interests and the role of polity-wide political polarization in enabling such trade-offs. The project develops a game-theoretic framework that clarifies how voters' willingness to make such trade-offs at the micro-level results in the subversion of democracy by incumbents at the macro level. This framework is empirically evaluated using a combination of cross-country data and a series of survey experiments designed to credibly elicit voters' willingness to trade off democratic principles for competing political goals in a number of critical cases. The survey-experimental design employs candidate-choice experiments as an indirect questioning technique while emphasizing cross-country comparability and structural identification.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.