Collaborations

Not my neighbor: Social prejudice and support for democracy

[pre-print from MPSA 2022] [introduction] [chapter 1] [book prospectus]

Nicholas T. Davis and Steven V. Miller

In theory, Americans like democracy. In practice, this affection is less clear. People like power and are reluctant to cede it, even when they legitimately lose political contests. Why? One explanation involves democracy’s promises: it affords equal access to levers of power via elections, creating natural tensions among groups competing over scare material and psychological resources. Given the central role of race in orienting Americans’ social and political experiences, these tensions are exacerbated when it comes to power-sharing, especially for socially prejudiced citizens. Drawing from an intergroup relations framework, we suspect that white citizens faced with out-group threat may be less inclined to express appreciation for democratic values because democracy supplies access to out-groups who make competing demands on the political system. To study this relationship, this book project explores the concept of neighborliness as an important form of anti-prejudice and analyzes the conditions under which social prejudice in neighbor interactions affects citizens’ commitments to democratic values and support for democracy.

Democracy's meanings: How the public understands democracy and why it matters

University of Michigan Press

[buy the book] [introduction]

Nicholas T. Davis, Keith Gaddie and Kirby Goidel

Democracy’s Meanings challenges conventional wisdom about how the public thinks about and evaluates democracy. Mining both political theory and over 75 years of public opinion data, the book argues that Americans think about democracy in ways that go beyond voting or elected representation. Instead, citizens have rich and substantive views about the material conditions that democracy should produce, which draw from their beliefs about equality, fairness, and justice.

Using survey data collected over several years, the authors construct a typology of views about democracy. Procedural views of democracy take a minimalistic quality. While voting and fair treatment are important to this vision of democracy, ideas about equality are mostly limited to civil liberties. In contrast, social views of democracy incorporate both civil and economic equality; according to people with these views, democracy ought to meet the basic social and material needs of citizens. Complementing these two groups are moderate and indifferent views about democracy. While moderate views sit somewhere in between procedural and social perspectives regarding the role of democracy in producing social and economic equality, indifferent views of democracy involve disaffection toward it. For a small group of apathetic citizens, democracy is an ambiguous and ill-defined concept.

Elite rhetoric can undermine democratic norms

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

[paper] [pre-registration]

Katherine Clayton, Nicholas T. Davis, Brendan Nyhan, Ethan Porter, Timothy J. Ryan, and Thomas J. Wood

Democracies depend on candidates and parties affirming the legitimacy of election results even when they lose. These statements help maintain confidence that elections are free and fair and thereby facilitate the peaceful transfer of power. However, this norm has recently been challenged in the United States, where former president Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked the integrity of the 2020 US election. We evaluate the effect of this rhetoric in a multiwave survey experiment, which finds that exposure to Trump tweets questioning the integrity of US elections reduces trust and confidence in elections and increases beliefs that elections are rigged, although only among his supporters. These results show how norm violations by political leaders can undermine confidence in the democratic process.