Wednesday, 8th June 2022
14:00 - 15:00
Conference Room - Nuffield College
Authoritarian Repression and the Creation of Democratic Norms
Democratic survival depends on social norms that enforce democratic behavior and punish behavior associated with authoritarianism. Who enforces these norms? Based on social psychological literature, I argue that in post-authoritarian democracies, these norms are enforced by individuals who have a stronger personal experience of authoritarian repression. I test this expectation with newly collected archival data from individuals repressed by the Francoist dictatorship, in Spain. In this presentation, I will discuss a research design for an experiment testing the individual-level mechanism. Because I know the surnames of individuals who were repressed, I can leverage that information as a treatment to update individuals’ perception that their family members may have been repressed. I expect upward updates to increase the probability of enforcement of pro-democracy norms.