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Authoritarianism, populism, and radicalism are considered important risks to citizens’ support for democratic institutions. Most studies have so far analyzed varying combinations of these, making it difficult to understand the potentially damaging effects of either of these separately. Analyzing a survey of 14,000 British, French, German, and Italian citizens, I show that studying authoritarianism, populism, and radicalism together reveals important differences in citizens’ support for and understandings of democracy. Authoritarians do not support democracy. Populists support democracy as much as non-populists, while they are highly critical of its real-world implementation. Their open-ended responses refer less often to liberal democracy than those of other respondents. Radicalism in itself correlates little with citizens’ democratic attitudes. Importantly, findings differ for left- and right-wing radicals. These findings urge us not to overlook the harmful effects of authoritarianism. We should not underestimate the extent to which some citizens, in particular authoritarians, consciously reject liberal democracy.
Lea Kaftan (Tue,) studied this question.