Making the case for democracy: a field-experiment on democratic persuasion

Wuttke, Alexander and Foos, Florian ORCID: 0000-0003-4456-3799 (2024) Making the case for democracy: a field-experiment on democratic persuasion. European Journal of Political Research. ISSN 0304-4130

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Abstract

Ordinary citizens can serve as a critical defence against democratic backsliding. But beneath the surface, citizens' commitment to democracy is sometimes fragile, with crises exacerbating existing anxieties. We introduce ‘democratic persuasion’ as an actionable intervention to foster the resilience of citizens' commitment to liberal democracy. ‘Democratic persuasion’ seizes the opportunity of communicating with wavering democrats. ‘Democratic persuasion’ entails actively making the case for democracy and discussing democracy's inherent trade-offs while engaging existing doubts and misperceptions. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which stirred frustrations with democracy and highlighted democratic trade-offs, we invited citizens via Facebook to participate in one of sixteen Zoom town halls to engage in discussions on pandemic politics with members of German state and federal parliaments. Each representative hosted two town halls, with random assignment to a condition of ‘democratic persuasion’ in one of the two town hall meetings. The field experiment yielded mixed results, demonstrating significant effects on some indicators of democratic commitment but not on others. This study contributes to the nascent body of research aimed at reinforcing the societal pillars of liberal democracies.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14756...
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Government
Subjects:	J Political Science > JC Political theory B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Date Deposited:	11 Jul 2024 12:45
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2024 04:22
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/124200

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