Why You Might Be a Democracy Hypocrite (And Why I Might Be Too)

Blame it on the high-stakes partisan polarization that is putting our democracy on spongy ground.

Hello, my name is Lee, I’m a political scientist, and I might be a democracy hypocrite. 

And you might be too. 

What if I’m a democracy hypocrite?

And if so, it’s totally understandable, and perhaps even rational: The stakes are high, and we don’t have two parties equally committed to democracy. 

So maybe if democracy is really at stake, extraordinary actions really are necessary. I’m not even sure what I mean by “extraordinary actions.” And just saying that makes my head spin, because I know it can’t be right.

But what else do you do when one side stops playing by the normal rules?

I’ve been thinking about these questions a lot in light of where we are in American politics these days. I’ve also been thinking about it in the context of a major new report I co-authored with Joe Goldman and Oscar Pocasangre: Democracy Hypocrisy: Examining America’s Fragile Democratic Convictions

The report analyzes lots of survey data. I’ll cover some of the key findings in this piece, and riff a bit on the consequences. But let’s start out with a quick diagnostic…

 

Take this quiz and find out: Are you in the elite 8 percent of consistent democracy supporters?

I’m not going to go through the entire survey here to diagnose you. Instead, I’ll just ask you five questions:

First off, and I hope this is an easy one: Would you say that having a democratic system is a good form of government?

I’m hoping you said yes. (If not, please see me after class)

But now we get into more complicated territory: 

Please read the following scenarios and consider: How appropriate would it be for President Biden to take action on his own, even if the Constitution does not give him the explicit power to act without congressional approval.

  - The country is facing an immediate military threat 

 -  A large majority of the American people believe that the president should act 

 -  The president knows it is the right thing to do for the American people 

  -  The president has sought a compromise with Congress but the other party is playing partisan games

Think about these scenarios. Conjure up, if you like, an issue you care a lot about, and imagine Republican congressional intransigence. That’s what I’m doing as I write. And I’m … struggling here.  If it’s a significant act on climate or gun safety — or another issue I really care about. Then … maybe? I mean, these are some urgent life and death issues, right? And I can’t trust Republicans to do the right thing, can I? And a Democrat might only be in the White House for a limited time. And the Constitution is silent on lots of things, and so maybe…  and Oh Sugarplum Fudge! I might really be a democracy hypocrite! 

I’m a political scientist. I know that democracy is a fragile agreement that relies on restraint. So I know what the “correct” answers are supposed to be. I know that extra-constitutional executive aggrandizement and overreach are key drivers of democratic breakdown. I know that these are the typical excuses would-be autocrats give for over-stepping constitutional lines. And I know that if “President Biden” were swapped out for “President Trump” I would feel completely differently.

I just co-wrote this whole report about democracy hypocrisy. And yet, here I am, admitting for all the world that when the stakes are high, commitment to democratic norms is… hard. Very, very hard.

I’m not alone. 

Only about 1 in 4 of Americans consistently and uniformly support democratic norms.

Support drops to 1 in 12 when we consider specific scenarios of unilateral executive action.

In short: Our democracy is on spongy ground

Democracy on spongy ground.

 

And with that … it’s time to dig into the findings of our report.

Support for democracy is more superficial than it should be

A quick plug on why this report is significant: It’s based on panel data over seven years and four surveys.  We asked the same people the same questions over multiple years. Panel data like this is very rare.

This means we can observe real people, changing their minds, in real time, depending on who’s in the White House. In other words: Hypocrisy in action. 

Let’s start at the beginning: Do we think having a democracy is good? Mostly, we do. Do we prefer democracy over other systems? Mostly we do. 

 

Yes, there are some worrying trends here. Support for democracy is down. But it’s still in super-majority territory, which is good.

But now, let’s test out how support for particular principles of liberal democracy, like congressional oversight and a free press, stack up.

Here, the ground starts to feel spongier. 

Overall, we’ve got high support for these principles. 

But many Republicans in particular are fair-weather supporters of congressional oversight and a free press. They like these checks and balances and oversight when Biden is in the White House. When Trump’s in the White House? Eh… Not so much.

The powerful thing about panel data is that we don’t just have to rely on aggregates. We can observe how individuals waver across surveys. And they waver quite a bit. On average, for each issue on its own, the share of respondents who wavered across multiple surveys is about one in four. 

This is … not great.  But wait. It gets more discouraging. When we get into the specific scenarios, the inconsistencies multiply. Is it okay for the president to take action on his own, even when the Constitution does not give him explicit power?  

Well, to most people, that depends: Is it President Trump, or President Biden? If it’s my guy, it’s okay. If it’s the other guy…. no way in hell!

In 2019, with Trump in the White House, a majority of Republicans said it’s okay for President Trump to act on his own, even if the Constitution does not give him explicit power. Democrats naturally disagreed.

But when it was 2022 and the president was Joe Biden, the numbers completely reversed. These are truly remarkable swings. 

Here’s how Republicans shift across questions:

And Democrats… 

When we add it all together, across all the surveys and many questions, that’s where we get the big finding about democratic hypocrisy

Only about 27 percent of Americans consistently and uniformly support democratic norms in a battery of questions across multiple survey waves, including 45% of Democrats, 13% of Republicans, and 18% of Independents. When adding responses to hypothetical scenarios about unilateral action by the president, the share of Americans that consistently supports democratic norms over this time period drops to just 8 percent, including 10% of Democrats, 5% of Republicans, and 11% of Independents.

So why are so many people so inconsistent? A key factor is “Affective Polarization” (the somewhat clunky political science term that describes how much people dislike the opposite party compared to their own party). 

Basically, if you are a Republican who sees a huge difference between Republicans and Democrats, you are much more willing to tolerate executive aggrandizement by Trump, and much more likely to oppose Biden’s aggrandizement. And if you are a Democrat, it’s the other way around. 

Okay, so extreme partisanship is a key part of the problem here. But what about Independents? Can they save us?

Unfortunately, the evidence here is not super-encouraging. As we note in the report, self-declared Independents are also inconsistent in their support for democratic norms, though their inconsistency across waves appears random (not tied to partisan support).

Other work suggests that Independents are more prone to anti-system views. Overall, our report finds them a little less supportive of democracy than partisans. 

If you want some good news, well, there’s at least one piece in our report: We find few “consistent authoritarians” — which we define as Americans who consistently justify political violence or support alternatives to democracy over multiple survey waves. We estimate only 8% of the public meets this dismal stability. 

A growing pile of scholarship agrees: democracy hypocrisy is real, it’s dangerous, and it’s linked to high-stakes partisan polarization. 

Our report is unique because we have panel data. Our conclusions are consistent with what other scholars are finding: Most people support democracy in the abstract. But in the specifics, support gets squishier. And the more one probes with specific scenarios, the squishier it gets. 

Study after study finds that when partisanship and democracy tussle, partisanship usually wins, especially in high-stakes polarized politics. Put simply, most people put partisanship ahead of democratic commitments.

People easily make excuses for their side’s rule-bending as necessary given the circumstances, or that it’s just NBD (no big deal). Everyone does it. Excuses come especially easily when elites on their side say it’s fine. 

These same people, however, are particularly attuned to the other side’s every action as potentially un-democratic. Even ordinary political activity becomes a threat.

Generally, the partisan willingness to violate democratic norms is the highest among people who view opposing partisans as most threatening. This is hardly surprising — if you think the opposing party winning represents an existential threat to democracy and/or your fundamental moral values and well-being, then perhaps it’s appropriate (and maybe just this once) to change the rules to save democracy. 

A few scholars have recently labeled this problem the “subversion dilemma” — a term that nicely captures the core devil’s logic here: If I, as a Democrat, say that Democrats should take extraordinary political hardball actions to expand voting rights, because democracy is facing an existential threat, am I just fueling Republican misperceptions that Democrats want to rig elections to win them, which in turn justifies Republican hardball to restrict voting rights? As the authors of the subversion dilemma paper warn: “the belief that the other side will subvert democracy leads partisans to support subverting it themselves.”

Whether these beliefs are based on misperceptions is sometimes hard to tell. Maybe I’m a victim of a biased media?

And I do know that in high-stakes environments of deep binary partisan polarization, it becomes much easier to demonize the threat of the other side. Thus, high levels of affective polarization correlate with high willingness to put partisanship ahead of democracy, both at an individual and a societal level. Yet, as an individual, I still think I’m being consistent with my deeply-grounded views about democratic equality.

Yet, once the dangerous doom loop of misperception and demonization gets going, democratic trust gives way to a “strike first” mentality. To quote one recent study:, “Given the self-reinforcing nature of enemy perceptions, democratic grievances are likely to pile up. Claims and counterclaims of democratic rule violations tend to harden into narratives in which both sides describe each other as existential threats to democracy.”

Which is pretty much where we are, here in 2024…

So, what happens when one party turns against democracy in a two-party system? Nothing good 

The looming orange elephant in the room, of course, is that the Republican frontrunner is running as the first openly authoritarian presidential candidate in American history. He talks freely about vengeance and dictatorship. He says he will “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.” This is not normal democracy talk.

Usually, however, would-be authoritarians are more coy about their intentions, framing even authoritarian acts as somehow democratic. Trump is not. Most would-be authoritarians around the world are coy because they reasonably expect that voters will punish such talk. After all, most citizens in most countries think democracy is a pretty good system, and don’t want to give it up. 

But Trump has tested the limits of what voters will tolerate, time and time and time again. Each time, he has learned he can get away with quite a bit. Partisanship is more powerful than any abstract commitment to democracy. And besides, he’s already convinced many Republicans that Democrats are the true threat to democracy, because they’re the ones who rig elections. So it’s all justified, right?

Over the past three years, Republican voters have become more likely to think January 6 was a minor incident, worthy of forgetting. Trump remains ascendant. And as any parenting book will tell you, rewarding bratty behavior over and over only turns your children into bigger brats.

But here’s where the cognitive psychology of high-stakes binary polarization becomes so destructive. If one were to remain a Republican after all Trump has said and done, one would need to shape one’s understanding of reality to justify that decision. And many have.

Understandably, there was no real choice here. For most Republicans , the alternative of becoming a Democrat was just… not possible, given their conception of what being a Democrat meant: Democrats were the opposition.

And in a two-party system, there are only… two alternatives — support the other party, or become politically homeless. So, many Republicans updated their understanding of events to fit with their identity: being a Republican.

 People are group creatures, and they want to belong. To most people, belonging is more important than truth.  Social isolation is real, objective, and terrible. Truth can feel more malleable and subjective. 

Trump’s conflict-seeking approach is a tried-and-true tactic of authoritarian leadership. By escalating conflicts, Trump hardened the boundaries of us and them. He is constantly forcing people to choose sides. The more the gap widens, the more he can consolidate power. 

Because what are Republicans going to do? Vote for the Democrat? That’s asking a lot, if Democrats have been the opposition party for your entire political life. 

Vote for a third party candidate? Go ahead, throw your vote away. 

Why electoral reform is the best path out of democracy hypocrisy

And here, once again, is why I see electoral reform as so essential. 

Imagine if fusion voting were widely legal in the upcoming presidential election. Imagine a third party, say, the “Constitutional Republicans.” Such a party could offer its ballot line to pro-democracy Democrat like Joe Biden. They could send a message: “We’re not Democrats, but for this election, we’re supporting Joe Biden because principles of constitutional democracy are at stake.”

Such a party (or really multiple new parties) could offer new political identities and homes to those who feel trapped and isolated in the current two-party doom loop. By making politics less binary, more parties could sap Trump of his not-so-secret conflict-exploding power the binary two-party system gives him. There is no lesser of three evils.

A “Constitutional Republican”  party would hold the balance of power in key swing states by organizing a crucial voting bloc.  By organizing this voting bloc, this party could demonstrate its power and even bargain for commitments and cabinet posts in a potential second Biden administration. This would empower and engage the voters who must need to be engaged and empowered to protect our democracy right now – those who really do think of themselves as Constitutional Republicans.

Here, the story of Poland’s 2023 election, held under multi party proportional representation, offers some useful guidance in responding to an authoritarianism. Three opposition parties ran as a loose coalition, and won a majority of seats. 

As Anne Applebaum (an expert in Polish politics) observed, “The existence of three opposition parties meant that different messages were heard by different parts of the electorate, on the center-right as well as the center-left. Some of the candidates attacked PiS. Some used the language of unity and called for an end to polarization.”  The parties have since formed a governing coalition that promises “to restore rule of law, address the climate crisis, and improve Poland’s track record on women’s rights.”

Back here at home, the stakes are growing ever higher, and the authoritarian rhetoric ever higher. One would hope we’d see some genuine pushback here. But… if many of us really are democracy hypocrites, maybe this is not a realistic hope.

And that is a depressing thought.

Ultimately, democracy depends on both leaders and structures. We need leaders who hold firm to the commitments of restraint and core democratic norms, even when citizens may be willing to tolerate deviance. But we also need structures that enable citizens to punish such deviances without having to sacrifice other things that they hold dear. 

Here’s the bottom line: We should never face a choice between upholding democracy and preserving our core values.  Because when we’re put in that position, we, the citizens, might make the democracy-weakening choice. And if our leaders know what they can get away with, they might just make the wrong choices for us. 

When reaching for a simple definition of democracy, I often reach for Adam Przeworski’s definition: “a system in which parties lose elections” But then I ask myself: will we still have a democracy if Republicans win in 2024? And if the answer is no, then I ask myself: if democracy depends on Democrats winning in November, do we have a democracy at all?

Spongy ground, indeed. 

---