What makes voters willing to tolerate undemocratic behaviours? Survey experiment from South Korea

Abstract

ABSTRACT What makes voters willing to tolerate leaders’ undemocratic behaviours? As institutional mechanisms have proven vulnerable to partisan interests, the ballot box has emerged as the ultimate safeguard of democracy when voters will reject undemocratic politicians. In seeking to answer this question, we focus on how partisanship and views of democracy affect voter willingness to punish politicians for undemocratic behaviours. We conduct a conjoint experiment in South Korea where concerns about democratic backsliding have recently increased. We find that Korean voters tend to electorally punish politicians for undemocratic behaviours. However, strong partisanship and affective polarization weaken the likelihood of electoral punishment, and voters are more willing to forgive undemocratic behaviour by co-partisan candidates. Our results also indicate that leaders experience varying degrees of punishment for different types of undemocratic behaviours contingent upon voter perspectives on democracy.