In Europe, Democracy Erodes from the Right

We aim to diagnose democratic vulnerabilities of Europe by conducting experiments that probe Europeans' ability to recognize and punish politicians who undermine democracy. We find evidence of two consistent reservoirs of tolerance for authoritarianism across seven countries: the illiberal right and the disengaged. First, citizens in the illiberal right support parties on the extreme, populist, radical, or nationalist right. Those in the second group are citizens who do not vote, but who, in many countries, are latent supporters of the illiberal right and who show just as much leniency toward transgressions against democracy. The source of the illiberal right's tolerance of authoritarianism thus appears to lie not in how much it cares about its signature issues-immigration or traditional values-but rather in how little it cares about democracy. Overt and latent authoritarian potential rests with the far-right fringes of Europe's electorates.

Now, suppose there comes onto the scene a politician who has promised to fix an acute political grievance felt broadly. But to do this he announces-just as Serbia's president Aleksandar Vu Črić did-the country must rid itself of "lying, "treacherous" journalists who behave as "foreign mercenaries."1 And-just like Poland's governing Law and Justice party-he asserts, his government must first eliminate the judges who have been finding his party's policies unconstitutional.2 Or he suggests-as Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orbán has-that the government keep track of NGOs receiving funding from abroad-and that also happen to oppose his party's use of public funds.3Who will vote for him? Will he succeed in getting the required support to destroy democracy from within?

A sharp fall in the vote share coming to candidates displaying undemocratic behaviour reflects an resilient electorate. Little or no decline is a sign of tolerance for authoritarianism. This diagnosis is, by necessity, counterfactual and therefore prospective inasmuch as it allows us to probe citizens' willingness to condone democratic transgressions not only by politicians from parties or countries which have already experienced democratic erosion but also in those that have not yet experienced real-world attempts to subvert democracy. It is a way to diagnose an electorate's authoritarian potential, both overt and hidden. It is a stress test.

We found that the Europeans who perform worst on our democratic stress test come from two subgroups of their electorates. The first group of voters has a few conspicuous, closely related characteristics. They support parties that have been variously described as the far, populist, radical or nationalist right:6 the Conservative People's Party - EKRE in Estonia, Alternative for Germany - AfD in Germany; Law and Justice and Confederation in Poland; Vox in Spain, the Serbian Progressive Party, the Socialist Party of Serbia, and Dveri in Serbia; and the Sweden Democrats in Sweden. According to the findings, respectively, these voters want to limit immigration, reduce the rights of minorities, preserve family culture as it is, and protect their country from globalization or national sovereignty. To sum up, this is representative of illiberal right Europeans.

For most of those countries, there is the citizens that were demonstrating the minor interest in candidates violated such principles of democratic politics:. When asked about past or future voting intentions, rather than naming a political party, citizens in this group simply say that they did not or would not vote—they are disengaged. In Estonia, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Sweden this group shows as much acceptance of authoritarianism as do illiberal-right voters. In fact, when the disengaged do reengage in politics, they tend to gravitate toward their electorates' least democratic enclaves—the illiberal right. For the disengaged citizen, disaffection with particular parties or politicians seems to go hand in hand with disregard for democracy in general.

In Europe, these two groups of citizens represent a reservoir of tolerance for authoritarianism—a reservoir that politicians with authoritarian ambitions can and do draw on. To put it in other words, neither subgroup actively supports authoritarianism, at least not as such. Even so, they differ from all other groups due to their readiness to ignore the anti-democratic instincts of the candidate. More than any other group in the European electorate, this set of citizens is prepared to trade democratic principles against elected representatives of those interests and parties which represent their interests. In Europe, democracy decays from the right.7

Europe's Reservoirs of Tolerance for Authoritarianism

To diagnose comprehensively Europe's tolerance for authoritarianism, we asked our subjects about their resistance to assaults on a range of democratic freedoms. In order to test respondents' willingness to compromise on electoral fairness, for instance, we presented them with the option of voting for a candidate who promised to "direct infrastructure spending to districts that voted for his party.".