How Voters Respond to Presidential Assaults on Checks and Balances: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Turkey
Aytuğ Şaşmaz,
Alper H. Yagci and
Daniel Ziblatt
EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2022, vol. 55, issue 11, 1947-1980
Abstract:
Why do voters support executive aggrandizement? One possible answer is that they do so because they think this will ease their preferred leader’s hand in putting their partisan vision into action, provided that the leader will continue winning elections. We study this phenomenon through a survey experiment in Turkey, by manipulating voters’ perceptions about the potential results of the first presidential election after a constitutional referendum of executive aggrandizement. We find that voters from both sides display what we call “elastic support” for executive aggrandizement; that is, they change previously revealed constitutional preferences in response to varying winning chances. This elasticity increases not only when citizens feel greater social distance to perceived political “others” (i.e., affective polarization) but also when voters are concerned about economic management in a potential post-incumbent era. Our findings contribute to the literature on how polarization and economic anxiety contribute to executive aggrandizement and democratic backsliding.
Keywords: democratic backsliding; executive aggrandizement; referenda; voter behavior; polarization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:300885
DOI: 10.1177/00104140211066216
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