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Democratic hypocrisy – the tendency for citizens to express support for democratic norms in the abstract while tolerating violations of those norms when doing so serves their partisan interests – has been identified as a potential threat to liberal democracy in conditions of affective polarisation. Yet existing research has relied on declared preferences, leaving open the question of whether such hypocrisy manifests itself in the kinds of multidimensional choices that characterise real political decision-making. Using a conjoint experiment embedded in a three-wave panel survey spanning Poland’s transition from illiberal PiS incumbency to a pro-democratic KO-led coalition government, I examine whether citizens’ revealed preferences for liberal democracy change when power changes hands. Results show that Polish citizens consistently punish candidates who espouse illiberal views, and that this tendency is not significantly altered by the change of government, even among citizens who are highly affectively polarised. Contrary to expectations, citizens polarised in favour of the former incumbent party did not become more protective of liberal-democratic norms after losing power. These findings suggest that revealed preferences for liberal democracy are more stable than theories of democratic hypocrisy would predict, but also that democratic restoration cannot rely on a natural correction in public attitudes following a change of government.
Ben Stanley (Wed,) studied this question.