The Social Dynamics of Democratic Preferences

Presentation by
Daniel Goldstein
Assistant Professor of Political Science
University of Oslo

In many countries, authoritarian politicians and parties who once appeared electorally unviable have rapidly gained traction, transforming fringe positions into realistic bids for power and sustained office. We propose social dynamics to explain the spread of undemocratic preferences and behavior among the public. Specifically, we explore the role of social conformity, private acceptance and social sanctioning in shaping individuals’ preferences on democracy. Methodologically, the social roots of democratic preferences have been difficult to investigate, since observational data confound influence with selection and survey experiments fail to capture genuine social environments. We address this gap through a series of laboratory studies that bring participants into direct interaction with peers. We manipulate perceptions of prevailing social norms, vary expectations of sanctions in public versus private contexts, and assess willingness to sanction anti-democratic behavior. By isolating the effects of social influence on both public expression and private endorsement of democratic preferences, our study advances a behavioral account of how democratic commitments are socially constructed and how they may erode."

Daniel is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Oslo, and was a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford as well as a postdoctoral fellow at the European University Institute. His research agenda centers on social norms, democratic backsliding, and political violence. Methodologically, he employs both formal theory and causal inference techniques, such as survey experiments. His work has been published in International Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Politics, and Perspectives on Politics.