Citizens would only give up free elections in exchange for a threefold increase in income, according to research by the UB

 

The increasing political polarization and the emergence of populist parties with authoritarian tendencies have generated much concern about citizens’ adherence to democracy and the durability of liberal institutions today. Researchers at the University of Barcelona and Princeton University have used an innovative methodology to estimate how much citizens value democracy and other economic and social features, such as having a public healthcare system or living in an egalitarian society. The results, based on experiments based on surveys conducted in France, Brazil and the United States, and published in the journal PNAS, show that citizens’ income would have to triple for them to give up free elections. Given this strong democratic support, the study concludes that democracy could not be endangered by citizen disaffection as much as by possible actions of anti-democratic minorities.

“Although there is an authoritarian minority in all three countries, the formation of a non-democratic majority (offering more income and/or other goods to respondents) is very unlikely. These results imply that, contrary to the growing discussion about a possible crisis of democracy, liberal democratic values remain substantially robust in high- and middle-income democracies”, says explains Carles Boix, Robert Garrett Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and director of the IPErG research group in the UB’s Faculty of Economics and Business, who wrote this article in collaboration with professors Alícia Adserà (Princeton University) and Andreu Arenas (UB and Barcelona Institute of Economics).

Estimating the “price” of democracy

This study appears in a context where recent research has detected processes of reversal of democratic guarantees and practices initiated by democratically elected officials. Given this threat, the new study aimed to find out to what extent popular support for democratic institutions is robust. To this end, the researchers have designed a methodology, based on surveys of 2,000 participants in each of the three countries, in which they do not use direct questions, but ask respondents to rate different societies, which vary randomly in characteristics such as level of economic development, income inequality, democracy or the healthcare system.

The researchers have used these assessments to determine the value of democracy in relation to other characteristics, which also vary randomly, such as the individual income that respondents would have in these hypothetical societies. “The aim is to calculate the price of democracy and other economic and social features, and we do this by approaching the choice of these features as if they were in the real world, where we are used to choosing between different things, considering the trade-offs — the cost-benefit ratio — that can occur when we have to choose between different goods. It is therefore a method that also allows us to estimate the value among the population, a public health system, an equal society, and so on. In fact, we believe that this methodology can be useful for economists and other social scientists when designing institutions and evaluating different policies”, notes Carles Boix.

The selection of countries (Brazil, France and the United States) has allowed the researchers to analyze different levels of economic development and political institutions in states where authoritarian and anti-globalization politicians have achieved high levels of popularity, such as Bolsonaro, Le Pen and Trump.

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The threat from anti-democratic minorities

The results obtained in the three countries indicate that citizens’ income would have to be multiplied by a factor of three for them to give up free elections. This is a much higher “compensation”, for example, than that required to give up other collective goods. The only good with a price tag closer to that of democracy is that of a public healthcare system: income would have to double for the French to give it up, for example.

Although the researchers have also detected a minority — around a fifth of participants — who prefer not to have democracy regardless of the rest of the characteristics of society, they find a strong pro-democracy supermajority that would need substantial monetary compensation for giving up free elections. “This number is important and we interpret it as meaning that support for democracy is considerable and that reaching an illiberal majority is very difficult”, notes Carles Boix.

According to the article, these results make it difficult for politicians to violate core democratic rules and institutions while maintaining electoral support, at least in middle- and high-income democracies such as those analyzed. “The conclusion is that the crisis of democracy, if it is to come, will not come from what some researchers call democratic backsliding (the erosion of democratic practices and institutions by elected officials), but from anti-democratic minorities with the capacity to coordinate to impose themselves on the rest. The latter situation has historically been the typical path that has led to the collapse of democracies”, concludes Professor Boix, who has already begun work to extend the study to citizens of other countries.

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