Trump Ante Portas: Political Polarization Undermines Rule-Following Behavior

Christoph Feldhaus (), Lukas Reinhardt () and Matthias Sutter
Additional contact information
Christoph Feldhaus: Ruhr University Bochum
Lukas Reinhardt: University of Oxford

No 17448, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In a democracy, it is essential that citizens accept rules and laws, regardless of which party is in power. We study why citizens in polarized societies resist rules implemented by political opponents. This may be due to the rules' specific content, but also because of a general preference against being restricted by political opponents. We develop a method to measure the latter channel. In our experiment with almost 1,300 supporters and opponents of Donald Trump, we show that polarization undermines rule-following behavior significantly, independent of the rules' content. Subjects perceive the intentions behind (identical) rules as much more malevolent if they were imposed by a political opponent rather than a political ally.

Keywords: political polarization; social identity; outgroup; economic preferences; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D90 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2024-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17448.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Trump Ante Portas: Political Polarization Undermines Rule-Following Behavior (2024)
Working Paper: Trump ante Portas: Political Polarization Undermines Rule-Following Behavior (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17448

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().