DEMOCRACY WATCH“Mega Study” Points to Ways to Strengthen Democracy

American democracy is at risk, Stanford scholars and others have warned.

Many studies have found anti-democratic attitudes and support for partisan violence are at concerning levels among the American public, partisan animosity is growing, and Americans are willing to compromise democratic principles for partisan gain.

Stanford sociologist Robb Willer is among those worried about what these attitudes mean for the stability of democracy in the U.S.

To counter some of the risks Willer and many Americans are troubled by, Willer launched a massive, three-year project to test a variety of simple and scalable ways to counter anti-democratic beliefs that threaten the country’s political future.

Now, results from their experiment, conducted on a national sample of over 32,000 American partisans, have been released in a working paper and as a website, Strengthening Democracy Challenge.

Overall, Willer and his team found a set of effective strategies that reduced support for undemocratic practices, candidates, and partisan violence. Partisan animosity was also lowered by many of the interventions they tested. The researchers also found that the strategies they identified often impacted other outcomes, such as opposition to bipartisan cooperation and biased perceptions of politicized facts.

“This is important because, if a country has free and fair elections, the public provides a critical check against undemocratic candidates,” said Willer, a professor of sociology and director of the Polarization and Social Change Lab. “Thus, an important way to stop politicians from engaging in undemocratic practices is to somehow mobilize voters to oppose them, and the threat of that can help to deter these actions in the first place.”

Crowdsourcing Ways to Reduce Anti-Democratic Attitudes
The study, which launched in July 2021, was partly motivated by the research team’s concerns about anti-democratic trends emerging in the U.S.– particularly bogus claims about election fraud that eventually culminated in former President Donald Trump’s allegation that the U.S. 2020 presidential election was stolen from him – and their implications for democratic governance.

“One of the most concerning trends we see right now is widespread skepticism and even denial of the results of the 2020 election,” said Willer, who is also co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. “Just as concerning to me is that among the large portion of Republicans who do not believe the 2020 election is rigged, many – perhaps the majority – are still likely to vote for the many politicians who are not speaking out against these unsupported suspicions.”