Output
Publications
By:
Damjan Tomic, Sergi Ferrer, Enrique Prada & Enrique Hernández
Research on the impact of elections on attitudes toward democracy has focused primarily on satisfaction with democracy. Building on this, we analyze how winning and losing elections, along with affective polarization, shapes citizens’ support for norms of democratic restraint and consent. We propose that partisan animus weakens the “reservoir of goodwill” that helps citizens accept democratic norms that may go against their self interest. Using a comparative study of 35 elections and two quasi-experimental case studies, we find that while differences between winners and losers in their support for norms of restraint and consent can be statistically significant, they are substantively small compared to several benchmarks, even in highly polarized contexts. Thus, while satisfaction with democracy is notably shaped by winner-loser dynamics, especially when polarization is high, the impact of those dynamics on support for core democratic principles is limited. These findings improve our understanding of the role of citizens in democratic processes.
Published in Comparative Political Studies in 2026
By:
Sergi Ferrer, Enrique Hernández, Enrique Prada & Damjan Tomic
Recent studies suggest that citizens are unlikely to trade off free elections for other desirable outcomes, such as economic growth. However, while free elections are central to democracies, today democracy is not often undermined by abolishing elections. Our study shifts the focus to citizens’ willingness to trade off the more granular democratic principles frequently eroded in backsliding processes–such as judicial independence, media freedom, or horizontal accountability–for higher incomes. Through a seven country conjoint experiment, we analyze how citizens prioritize among these principles and estimate their “willingness to pay”–or the additional income needed to persuade citizens to give these principles up. We find that while citizens do not relinquish free elections easily, they are more open to forgo liberal principles undermined in backsliding processes, especially when these principles are eroded gradually, one at a time. These findings help explain why democratic backsliding may be often tolerated by citizens.
Published in the European Journal of Political Research
By:
Enrique Hernández
Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS), this chapter examines the stability and change in Europeans’ views of democracy between 2012 and 2021. It analyzes the importance citizens attribute to different elements of democracy, including electoral, liberal, social, direct, and populist components. The results show continued high support for core democratic elements such as free elections and the rule of law, as well as high support for the populist elements of democracy. However, there is some decline in the importance attributed to social democratic elements and direct democracy, likely influenced by economic and political developments such as the economic recovery after the Great Recession and the Brexit referendum. Overall, the chapter shows that Europeans remain committed to democracy. Rather than turning their backs on democracy, Europeans are still quite demanding about what democracy ought to be.
Published in Ferrín, M., Kriesi, H., 2025. How Europeans View and Evaluate Democracy Revisited: Ten Years Later. Oxford University Press.
By:
Mónica Ferrín, Enrique Hernández and Pedro Riera
Since 2012, the European political landscape has transformed with the rise of non-mainstream parties, particularly radical right parties, which gained significant ground in national elections and the European Parliament. This shift may impact Europeans’ views on democracy, as these parties promote alternative democratic models beyond the traditional liberal framework. Considering the findings in this volume that alternative views to the liberal democracy model are prominent, this chapter explores the relationship between democratic views and voting behavior, analyzing data from ESS rounds 6 and 10. The findings indicate that voters of opposition parties are more likely to support liberal democracy, while right-wing voters generally oppose it. The study underscores the complexity of democratic preferences and highlights the need for a nuanced approach beyond the mainstream versus challenger party dichotomy.
Published in Ferrín, M., Kriesi, H., 2025. How Europeans View and Evaluate Democracy Revisited: Ten Years Later. Oxford University Press.
By:
Sofia Breitenstein & Enrique Hernández
While elections are an instrument to hold politicians accountable, corrupt politicians are often re-elected. A potential explanation for this paradox is that citizens trade off integrity for competence. Voters may forgive corruption if corrupt politicians manage to deliver desirable outcomes. While previous studies have examined whether politicians’ competence moderates the negative effect of corruption, this paper focuses on voters’ priorities and directly assesses what citizens value more: integrity or favourable outcomes. Using a survey experiment, we assess citizens’ support for politicians who violate the law in order to improve the welfare of their community and, in some cases, benefit personally from these violations. The results indicate that citizens prefer a politician who follows the law, even if this leads to a sub-optimal outcome. However, voters are more likely to overlook violations of the law that benefit the community if these do not result in a personal gain for politicians (i.e., in the absence of corruption). These findings suggest that the mild electoral punishment of corruption may be due to the public’s unawareness of private gains from malfeasance, or to the delay in these private benefits becoming apparent by election day.
Published in the European Political Science Review in 2024
By:
Enrique Hernández & Macarena Ares
In this paper we analyze the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Europeans’ support for democracy. For this purpose we leverage the coincidence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 with the fieldwork of the European Social Survey in 10 countries. By means of an unexpected event during survey design we analyze the impact of the invasion on 12 different attitudes toward democracy, including overt support for democracy, as well as the importance attributed to particular democratic principles. The results of this comprehensive analysis reveal that the invasion did not have a substantive impact on individuals’ attitudes toward democracy. In the face of an invasion of a neighboring country by an autocratic power, Europeans’ support for democracy was resilient, at least in the short-run. At the same time, though, this threat did not lead to a “rally-round-democracy” either.
Published in Research & Politics in 2023
Work in progress
By:
Enrique Hernández, Mónica Ferrín & Carol Galais
While freedom of expression is a key principle of democracy, normative theories do not provide a univocal answer about its potential limits. Two major normative views stand on this respect. The first one advocates for few or no freedom of speech limits, while the contrasting view argues in favor of establishing clear limits as a way to protect some groups or individuals. What makes an individual more prone to embrace an unrestricted (liberal) or a restrained (protective) view remains an unsolved matter. Moreover, existing research predominantly focuses on the general public and majorities, the ones who have to decide whether or not to restrain their speech to protect vulnerable individuals and groups. Instead, minorities’ views on the trade-off between protection and freedom of speech remain unexplored, even if minorities are a frequent target of offensive speech. In this article we test the impact of hate speech on attitudes towards freedom of speech among European Muslims. For this purpose, we exploit an unexpected event occurred during the fieldwork of the European Social Survey. Specifically, we track the effects of the release of the “Innocence of Muslims”, a short film that denigrates Islamic prophet Muhammad, on Muslims’ views on freedom of speech. Our findings reveal a shift towards a more protective stance on freedom of expression among Muslims in response to exposure to abusive speech directed towards their in-group. After being targeted through hate speech Muslims became much more open to establishing clear limits and boundaries on free speech. These results have relevant implications for current debates about the limits of free speech, and call for more attention to the reaction of minority groups that are often targeted through hate speech.
By:
Enrique Hernández , Sergi Ferrer, Enrique Prada & Damjan Tomic
The erosion of checks and balances is one of the defining traits of democratic backsliding. Aspiring autocrats in countries like Poland, Hungary or Israel have weakened the powers of the courts vis-à-vis the executive, and they have usually done so in the name of popular sovereignty. This paper explores the tension between the rule of law and popular sovereignty from the perspective of citizens. Are citizens ready to accept the constraints to popular sovereignty imposed by the rule of law through horizontal accountability mechanisms and judicial independence? Under which circumstances are voters willing to trade-off the rule of law for more popular sovereignty? We explore these questions through an original pre-registered observational study in 15 European countries that introduces innovative measurement strategies aimed at evaluating citizens’ views of the democratic trade-off between popular sovereignty and the rule of law. This evidence is complemented with a pre-registered conjoint experiment on judicial review fielded in four countries. Preliminary results reveal that instrumental considerations are the key factor that makes citizens more open to trading-off the rule of law by popular sovereignty. This paper contributes to current debates on democratic backsliding by advancing our knowledge about how citizens view the delicate balance between increasingly contested democratic principles such as popular sovereignty and the rule of law.
By:
Enrique Hernández , Sergi Ferrer, Enrique Prada
To protect themselves, democracies may restrict the rights of individuals or groups who seek to undermine this political system. However, despite a growing normative consensus about the legitimacy of such measures, public opinion on these restrictions remains largely underexplored. In this paper we focus on one of the most extreme manifestations of such militant restrictions on democracy: the banning of political parties. Specifically, we analyze whether and why citizens believe that democracies can legitimately ban certain political parties. To this end, we conducted an observational study and two survey experiments in 15 European democracies, complemented by an additional conjoint experiment in four of these countries. In these experiments, we manipulated: (i) the ideological orientation of parties promoting anti-democratic proposals; (ii) the intensity and nature of these proposals; and (iii) the popular support these parties enjoy. The findings reveal that Europeans are deeply divided over the legitimacy of banning political parties, with some citizens opposing such bans even for parties that openly advocate for overthrowing democracy. The results also reveal that these opinions are mainly influenced by citizens’ own partisan biases and their perceptions of the “real democratic threat” posed by these parties. These findings have relevant implications for ongoing debates about the legitimacy of militant democracy as a suitable approach to prevent and respond to democratic backsliding.
By:
Damjan Tomic, Enrique Hernández, Sergi Ferrer & Enrique Prada
Recent studies have attempted to reveal citizens’ true commitment to democratic norms and principles. We contribute to this strand of literature by analyzing the volatility and conditionality of citizens’ commitment to democratic norms and principles. First, we assess how aspects related to political sophistication may generally make citizens support for democratic norms and principles more volatile. Second, we examine how value-laden and affect-laden out-group considerations may condition and shift citizens’ preferences away from core democratic norms and principles. For these purposes, we focus specifically on citizens’ commitment to protecting the rights of minorities, protecting people from hate speech, and promoting political equality through quotas. To capture citizens’ general preferences about these principles we first employ original survey items that leverage a trade-off framing that pits these principles and norms against other incompatible democratic principles. Next, we randomly relate these norms and principles to particular groups (e.g., women, migrants, homosexuals, Muslims…) that may elicit different value- and affect-laden considerations among respondents. This reinforces the intrinsic tension that each trade-off involves and allows us to probe on the conditionality of citizens’ commitment to these key democratic principles. This study contributes to debates surrounding support for democracy by revealing the volatile and conditional nature of citizens’ commitment to democratic norms and principles.
By:
Enrique Prada, Enrique Hernández, Damjan Tomic & Sergi Ferrer
The right to protest is a key democratic principle and a central element of the participatory model of democracy. However, we have witnessed an increasing debate about the limits of this right, not only in backsliding democracies but also in consolidated ones, where some protests have been recently banned and repressed. But, unlike other contested democratic rights such as free speech, we know little about the extent to which the public may be willing to accept limitations of the right to protest and the factors that may drive citizens’ preferences about the boundaries of this right. In this study we unpack the multidimensionality of protests in order to assess whether and how citizens’ may be open to curtailing this democratic right. For this purpose, we field a series of factorial vignette experiments in four European countries with different “protest cultures”: Spain, Italy, Belgium, and the Czech Republic. Through these experiments we manipulate the characteristics of the protests in multiple dimensions: their size, popular support, and the potential negative side-effects of the protest. Through these analyses we explore if citizens’ support for the right to protest is conditional on these characteristics of protests, and if these characteristics can reinforce or offset each other depending on citizens’ pre-existing attitudes. The findings of this study may not only be relevant for current debates about the limits of democratic rights, but also for the literature on citizens’ support for democracy.
By:
Sergi Ferrer, Enrique Hernández, Enrique Prada & Damjan Tomic
This study will be conducted in 3 European countries to address the following question: How does citizens’ willingness and capacity to sacrifice political gains affect citizens’ preferences for responsiveness and responsibility? Previous research on political representation and policy responsiveness highlights that the degree to which governments are responsive and responsible may vary according to the electoral cycle or the economic context. While these patterns are significant, their impact on the political system hinges on whether parties’ actions align with citizens’ positions on the responsiveness-responsibility trade-off. In fact, if government decisions align with citizens’ expectations about them, trust and legitimacy in the political system may strengthen. However, a misalignment between citizens’ expectations for responsive or responsible government and actual government decisions may lead to dissatisfaction and distrust, potentially eroding the political system. We contribute to this literature by using a conjoint experiment that examines the conditions determining citizens preferences for responsiveness and responsibility. Our main expectation is that those citizens who can afford to sacrifice immediate political gains will be more likely to prioritize responsibility over responsiveness, while those citizens who cannot sacrifice political gains will be more likely to prioritize responsiveness over responsibility. We test this hypothesis drawing on a combination of a paired-conjoint experiment and a randomized vignette that manipulates the state of the economy. This experimental design is included in an online survey that will be fielded in the United Kingdom, France, and Portugal through the commercial firm Bilendi. The conjoint experiment presents respondents with two policy proposals that vary in terms of the agent proposing the policy, the main goal of the policies, experts’ opinion on the policies, EU position on the policies, citizen support for them, and the timeframe of their expected benefits. On top of the conjoint table where the two policy proposals are presented, we include a short vignette that manipulates the economic conditions under which the policy proposals are being discussed. Each participant completes five tasks, where they choose between the two policy proposals and rate their support for each proposal on a 0-10 scale. This study improves our understanding of how citizens navigate the Responsiveness-Responsibility trade-off in different economic conditions and enhances our understanding of when and why misalignments between citizens’ demands and governments’ decisions may arise.
By:
Damjan Tomic
The academic literature that deals with minorities is as disconnected as it is extensive. Minorities and their rights are debated in research related to political science, international relations and public policy—each of which, however, relies on slightly different conceptualizations of minorities. We address this incongruity by investigating how overlapping dimensions impact perceptions of political minority status and deservingness of protection in a democratic system. Given recent cultural developments and political debates related to social identities and corresponding systems of discrimination, we take an intersectional approach to understanding political minorities. We supplement an original public opinion survey with innovative measurement strategies fielded in 15 European countries with customized conjoints in France, Belgium and Switzerland. Our findings contribute to the vast literature on minorities by providing an empirical reconciliation of existing theoretical definitions. Furthermore, our results offer important insights into the biases that drive commitment to a fundamental liberal principle when it is pitted against the traditional democratic notion of popular sovereignty.
By:
Damjan Tomic
Protecting the rights of minorities is a fundamental principle in liberal democracies. Nevertheless, disregard for minority rights persists, as evidenced by its manifestation in various forms of discrimination, its ongoing contribution to economic and political disparity and its titular standing as the leading cause of global violent conflict. Protecting the rights of minorities is particularly relevant to democratic regimes, which are both the cause and consequence of pluralistic political delineations stemming from religious, regional, ethnic, racial and linguistic cleavages in a populace. Nevertheless, data from the European Social Survey shows considerable variation in the degree to which the rights of minorities are protected in European democracies, according to their citizenry, as well as the importance that the citizens of said democracies place on this principle. In this study, I use a vignette experiment to examine changes in citizens’ support for protecting the rights of minorities. I expect citizens’ support for protecting the rights of minorities to be influenced by their perceptions of the degree to which the rights of minorities are protected in a country in a compensatory manner. Furthermore, I expect that the degree to which citizens’ support for the protection of minority rights fluctuates to be moderated by whether they consider the group in question a political minority and the degree to which they like members of the group. I explore these notions by drawing on a vignette experiment included in an online survey conducted through Qualtrics and fielded through the online panel of the commercial firm Bilendi in Switzerland. In this experiment, respondents are presented with newspaper headlines announcing the outcome of a real referendum that either expanded or restricted the rights of a minority group in Switzerland. After being presented with the newspaper headline, respondents are asked the degree to which they feel the rights of minorities should be protected on a 0–10-point scale. This study contributes to current debates on variation in support for the protection of minority rights by elucidating a mechanism by which this support fluctuates.