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Comparative Politics
Political Research Quarterly
2022, Vol. 0(0) 1–16
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211073592
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Guardians of Democracy or Passive
Bystanders? A Conjoint Experiment on
Elite Transgressions of Democratic Norms
Inga A.-L. Saikkonen
1,
*and Henrik Serup Christensen
2,
*
Abstract
Emerging literature shows that citizens in established democracies do not unconditionally support central democratic
principles when asked to weigh them against co-partisanship or favored policy positions. However, these studies are
conducted in highly polarized contexts, and it remains unclear whether the underlying mechanisms also operate in more
consensual contexts. Furthermore, it is unclear whether “critical citizens”or satisfied democrats are more eager to
support democratic principles. We study these questions with evidence from a conjoint experiment conducted in Finland
(n= 1030), an established democracy with high levels of democratic satisfaction and a consensual political culture. We
examine how transgressions of two central democratic norms, the legitimacy of political opposition and the inde-
pendence of the judiciary, affect leader favorability. We also explore how these differ across ideological and policy
congruence and across levels of political disaffection. Our results show that some segments of the Finnish population are
willing to condone authoritarian behavior if this brings them political benefits. Furthermore, we find that satisfied rather
than “critical”citizens are more likely to sanction such behavior. These findings suggest that dangers of democratic
deconsolidation may appear even in consensus democracies with relatively low levels of political polarization.
Keywords
democratic deconsolidation, democratic transgressions, political dissatisfaction, policy congruence, conjoint experiments
Introduction
Public support for democracy is essential for democratic
stability (Dahl 1956,Lipset 1959,Easton 1965). Recent
scholarship has debated whether voters in established
democracies are increasingly willing to support more
authoritarian political alternatives to democracy, but the
findings are very mixed (Foa and Mounk 2016,2017 vs.
Alexander and Welzel 2017,Norris 2017,Voeten 2017).
Most recent studies have concluded that even though
voters in established democracies are very critical on how
democracy functions in their countries, they are still
supportive of core democratic principles and continue to
endorse democracy as a political system (Norris 1999,
2017,Wuttke et al. 2020).
Yet, democratic stability also requires that people are
willing to translate their pro-democratic attitudes into
practice, by being willing to defend democracy against the
transgressions of political leaders (Weingast 1997,2005,
Fearon 2011, for a discussion, see also Luo and
Przeworski 2019). Indeed, classical liberal democratic
theory stresses the need for citizen vigilance against “the
potential abuse of power by the state”(Norris 2011, 245).
Alarmed by the rise of populist and authoritarian politi-
cians in the world an emerging line of scholarship has
begun to examine whether citizens in established de-
mocracies are willing to condemn democratic transgres-
sions by politicians, especially when this means
prioritizing democratic principles against favored policy
goals or co-partisanship (Carey et al. 2020,Graham and
Svolik 2020). Most prominently, Graham and Svolik
(2020) found that when voters are asked to weigh their
support for democratic principles against partisan interests
1
Social Science Research Institute and the Department of Political
Science,
˚
Abo Akademi University, Finland
2
Department of Political Science,
˚
Abo Akademi University, Finland
*Both authors contributed equally
Corresponding Author:
Henrik Serup Christensen, Department of Political Science,
˚
Abo
Akademi Ekonomisk-statsvetenskapliga fakulteten, F¨
anriksgatan 3a,
˚
Abo
20500, Finland.
Email: henrik.christensen@abo.fi
or policy concerns, they care more about them than
democratic norms (for more nuanced findings, see Carey
et al. 2020). These findings are in line with earlier studies
that have shown that citizens take into consideration
multiple issue areas when evaluating the conduct of
politicians, and do not always punish “malfeasant”pol-
iticians if supporting these politicians brings adjacent
benefits (Klaˇ
snja and Tucker 2013,Franchino and
Zucchini 2015,Breitenstein 2019, see also Singer 2018).
We contribute to both literatures with the help of data
from a conjoint survey experiment embedded in a na-
tionally representative survey carried out in Finland in
May and June 2020. First, building on Carey et al. (2020)
and Graham and Svolik (2020), we examine whether
Finnish citizens support core democratic principles, es-
pecially when they are asked to weigh them against other
important dimensions, such as ideological or policy
congruence. Conjoint experiments are particularly suited
for exploring these questions as they enable us to probe
respondents’attitudes toward democracy while avoiding
problems with social desirability bias that may affect
answers to direct survey questions (Hainmueller et al.
2014,Svolik 2019 and 2020). Moreover, the experimental
design allows us to explore the multidimensional choices
that citizens make when assessing the behavior of (un)
democratic politicians and allows us to probe citizens’
“actual”commitment to democratic values as opposed to
their “stated”preferences measured in comparative surveys
(see Svolik 2019 and 2020,Graham and Svolik 2020).
Our results show that most Finnish citizens continue to
support core principles of democracy. However, worry-
ingly, we also find that even in Finland, with high levels of
democratic satisfaction (Rapeli and Koskimaa 2020) and a
consensual political culture (Karvonen 2014), some
people are willing to ignore blatant transgressions of
democratic principles when there is ideological and policy
goal alignment. The extant literature on voters’reactions
to democratic transgressions has examined these “trade-
off effects”mostly in highly politically polarized contexts,
such as the US and Venezuela (Carey et al. 2020,Graham
and Svolik 2020,Svolik 2020). These studies have
suggested that individual-level political polarization is
partially driving the unwillingness of voters to condemn
democratic norm violations by politicians (McCoy and
Somer 2019,Svolik 2019 and 2020,Graham and Svolik
2020). Our empirical setting allows us to examine voter
reactions to democratic norm violations by politicians in a
polity characterized by high degrees of social trust
(S¨
oderlund 2019) and relatively low ideological and af-
fective polarization (Isotalo et al. 2020,Reiljan 2020,
Wagner 2021). Yet we find that segments of the Finnish
population are willing to make significant trade-offs be-
tween democratic principles and policy concerns. This
suggests that these concerns may not be purely driven by
political polarization but may be more general to political
behavior in established democracies.
We also examine differences across levels of political
disaffection and thus contribute to the debate on the
linkage between democratic disaffection and support for
democracy. To our knowledge, this has not been examined
with experimental evidence previously. We find that
citizens with higher levels of political trust and democratic
satisfaction are more likely to defend core democratic
principles. This suggests that citizens with high political
satisfaction rather than the “critical citizens”(see Norris
1999) are the true guardians of democracy.
Theoretical Expectations: Citizens and
Democratic Transgressions
Democracy is a multidimensional concept. Mettler and
Lieberman (2020) argue that the functioning of modern
representative democracy is based on four essential di-
mensions: free and fair elections, respecting the civil and
political rights of the population, respecting the legitimacy
of the political opposition, and respecting the system of
separation of powers and the rule of law. The latter two
dimensions, respecting the legitimacy of political oppo-
sition and respecting the independence of the judiciary,
have been especially under attack in many European
established democracies, and we therefore focus on
measuring citizen responses to the trampling of these two
key democratic norms.
First, we examine citizens’reactions to politicians
breaking the democratic norm of respecting the legitimacy
of the political opposition. Modern representative de-
mocracy is based on free competition between politicians
for the support of the voters (Schumpeter 1942). The
functioning of representative democracy thus entails that
politicians respect the legitimacy of their political op-
ponents and do not prevent each other from governing or
campaigning (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018,Mettler and
Lieberman 2020). Building on the work of Juan Linz
(1978) Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) argued that toleration
for or encouragement of violence against political op-
position are warning signs that can help to identify pol-
iticians with authoritarian tendencies. We first examine
how Finnish citizens react to politicians seeking to restrict
political competition by exhorting the use of political
violence against their opponents. The literature on social
norms and informal institutions suggests that citizens
should punish transgressions of “socially shared norms”
such as basic democratic principles (Helmke and Levitsky
2004). Finnish voters report one of the highest levels of
democratic satisfaction in Europe, and the level of sat-
isfaction has remained rather stable over time (Karvonen,
2014;Kestil¨
a-Kekkonen 2015,Rapeli and Koskimaa
2020). Overall, we expect Finnish citizens to condemn
2Political Research Quarterly 0(0)
the exhortation of the use of political violence against their
opponents.
However, we go beyond previous efforts by examining
how leader favorability is affected when leaders transgress
this basic democratic norm by either inciting violence or
failing to condemn this sort of violence when it does
occur. Unlike previous studies that have studied voter
reactions to politicians either supporting or opposing
democratic violations, our experiment includes cases
where politicians tacitly approve serious democratic vi-
olations. This resembles real-world behavior where
politicians with authoritarian tendencies rarely advocate
illicit actions directly. Instead, they often signal their
support for these actions by refraining from explicitly
condemning these practices. While violence in any form
clearly violates basic democratic norms, there is a subtle,
albeit important, difference between a leader manifestly
inciting violence and quietly failing to clearly denounce
it when it does occur. From a democratic perspective,
citizens should be able to recognize that both tacitly
approving violence and inciting violence constitute vi-
olations of the basic democratic credo. However, there
may nonetheless be important differences in how they
affect leader favorability, which it is important to
examine.
The other basic democratic principle that we examine
concerns the rule of law and the respect for the separation
of powers. Democracy entails the basic legal and political
equality of all the citizens (Dahl 1991), and therefore, the
rule of law is one of the “essential pillars”of democratic
regimes (O’Donnell 2004, 32). However, questioning the
legitimacy of judicial decisions and judicial independence
has become worryingly common even in many estab-
lished European democracies. Breaking the norm of ju-
dicial deference also “frequently signal[s] the early stages
of democratic erosion”(Helmke and Rosenbluth 2009,
Mounk 2018, cited in Carey et al. 2020, 4). The second
norm that we test therefore is politician’s judicial defer-
ence to court decisions, and whether politicians argue that
judicial decisions should be respected even though this
may be politically disadvantageous for their party. Pre-
vious research has found that voters punish politicians
breaking the norm of judicial deference when there is a
strong pre-existing norm of compliance with the courts
(Krehbiel 2020), as there is in Finland (Kestil¨
a-Kekkonen
2015). We should therefore expect Finnish respondents to
condemn this democratic transgression.
In our conjoint experiment, we examine how breaking
these two basic democratic norms, not condemning or
inciting violence against political opponents and not re-
specting judicial independence, affects the favorability of
hypothetical political leaders. We expect that, overall,
Finnish citizens will condemn these democratic trans-
gressions. Accordingly, we propose the following two
hypotheses for the direct effects of leader transgressions of
basic democratic norms:
H1a: Not condemning or inciting physical attacks against op-
position candidates have negative effects on favorability com-
pared to condemning violence against opposition candidates.
H1b: Disrespecting the decisions of judicial officials has a
negative effect on favorability compared to respecting the
decisions of judicial officials.
However, these effects may not be homogenous in the
population. Particularly relevant issues for the current
purposes are the extent to which ideological or policy
congruence moderates these effects (see Graham and
Svolik 2020). Citizens evaluate politicians based on a
multiple, sometimes conflicting issues areas, such as their
policy positions and their reputation for competence
(valence) (Franchino and Zucchini 2015). Moreover,
citizens are found to make trade-offs between these
various dimensions when they evaluate the favorability of
different politicians (Franchino and Zucchini 2015,
Breitenstein 2019,Graham and Svolik 2020). For ex-
ample, voters may care sincerely about combating cor-
ruption but are willing to overlook corrupt behavior by
politicians if they represent qualities that are otherwise
desirable for voters (Breitenstein 2019, see also Klaˇ
snja
and Tucker 2013). For the present purposes, previous
literature has found that voters’willingness to punish
politicians who violate democratic standards is moderated
by their policy preferences. Voters with intense policy
preferences have been found to put more weight on
strongly held policies than on democratic norms (Graham
and Svolik 2020). We therefore expect that Finnish re-
spondents are less willing to condemn democratic vio-
lations by leaders who represent the “same side”in a
policy position that is important to the respondents.
Based on these considerations, we propose the fol-
lowing hypotheses for how the effects of norm trans-
gressions may differ depending on policy congruence
1
:
H2a: The effects of not condemning or inciting physical
attacks against opposition candidates are weaker when the
leader’s policy position is congruent with the respondent’s
policy position.
H2b: The effects of disrespecting the decisions of judicial
officials are weaker when the leader’s policy position is
congruent with the respondent’s policy position.
Voters have also been found to make trade-offs be-
tween partisanship and other attributes of politicians
(Breitenstein 2019) and this may even crowd out other
relevant information (Kirkland and Coppock 2018). The
extant literature has found that partisanship moderates
Saikkonen and Christensen 3
voters’willingness to punish democratic violations by
politicians. Voters employ a partisan “double standard”
when reacting to politicians’democratic violations, thus
punishing politicians with different partisanship more
strongly than co-partisan politicians (Graham and Svolik
2020). While ideology and partisanship remain inter-
twined, partisanship may be less imperative in multiparty
systems, especially in Finland where the electoral system
is strongly candidate-centered (Borg et al. 2020) and
affective polarization has traditionally been low, even if it
has increased slightly in recent years (Isotalo et al. 2020).
However, some studies have found that ideological
congruence may play a similar role in moderating voters’
willingness to condemn politicians who transgress against
basic democratic norms (Singer 2018,Chiopris et al.
2021). This is especially the case for egocentric ideo-
logical congruence, where there is a close ideological
match between the individual and the executive (Mayne
and Hakhverdian 2016). Singer (2018) suggests that
citizens who see the sitting executive as a representative of
their ideological interests are more willing to accept au-
thoritarian behavior from political leaders. This suggests
that citizens may be willing to trade off ideological
congruence for democratic principles, that is, overlook
democratic transgressions committed by a leader who is
ideologically close to them. Based on these consider-
ations, we propose the following hypotheses for ideo-
logical congruence:
H3a: The effects of not condemning or inciting physical
attacks against opposition candidates are weaker when the
leader’s ideological position is congruent with the respon-
dent’s ideological position.
H3b: The effects of disrespecting the decisions of judicial
officials are weaker when the leader’s ideological position is
congruent with the respondent’s ideological position.
A major factor for explaining the increased tolerance
for transgression of basic democratic norms is related to
the increase in political disaffection. Political disaffection
is a multifaceted phenomenon witnessed in most demo-
cratic countries, which entails that populations experience
low levels of trust in political actors and institutions,
decreasing satisfaction with the functioning of the dem-
ocratic system, and a dwindling belief in the respon-
siveness of the political system (Norris 2011,Stoker
2006). The increase in political disaffection seems to
be connected to the increasing political incivility that
shapes the nature of contemporary politics and is par-
ticularly prevalent among populist leaders who challenge
the status quo (Mutz 2015,Sydnor 2019). Populist leaders
frequently exploit feelings of discontent by questioning
the legitimacy of liberal democracy and the elected
officials (Norris and Inglehart 2019,4–6). It is therefore
important to examine whether the effects of transgressions
differ across levels of political disaffection to understand
why some citizens may be willing to accept that leaders
transgress basic democratic norms.
Political attitudes of ordinary citizens have to some
extent been neglected in the literature on democratic
backsliding. For example, Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018)
discuss various informal norms that act as guardrails to
protect democracy, but focus exclusively on political
elites and institutional factors. Nevertheless, citizens may
also act like guardians of democracy by punishing
democratic transgressions of elites (see, e.g., Weingast
1997). Classical literature on democratic support argued
that the satisfaction of citizens was paramount for dem-
ocratic stability (Almond and Verba 1963,Easton 1965).
According to this line of reasoning, it is the satisfied
citizens who are likely to punish leaders who violate
democratic norms. However, more recent contributions
argue that critical political attitudes may be beneficial for
democracy. Indeed, disaffection does not necessarily
entail a rejection of democracy per se, but a negative
evaluation of the actual performance of democracy
(Norris and Inglehart 2017, 427). According to Inglehart
(1997), generations born after WW2 exhibit more critical
attitudes toward authorities, including political elites.
However, this does not entail that they reject democracy as
an ideal. On the contrary, people embrace democratic
ideals but reject traditional forms of participation and
dislike the functioning of the traditional representative
structures since they feel that these do not constitute a
genuine democracy. According to this perspective, people
may be dissatisfied with the performance of the traditional
democracy, but these sentiments are beneficial for de-
mocracy since their critical attitudes keep citizens alert
and decision makers accountable (Norris 1999). It may
therefore be the case that critical citizens are more dis-
approving of democratic transgressions. Nevertheless, our
hypotheses here follow the traditional view that disaf-
fection enhances toleration for transgressions. We test the
following hypotheses for the effects across levels of
political disaffection:
H4a: The effects of not condemning or inciting physical
attacks against opposition candidates are weaker among
respondents with high levels of political disaffection.
H4b: The effects of disrespecting judicial officials are weaker
among respondents with high levels of political disaffection.
Since political disaffection is a multifaceted phe-
nomenon with different important aspects, we examine
these differences by focusing on three different attitudes:
Political trust, satisfaction with democracy, and external
4Political Research Quarterly 0(0)
political efficacy. These attitudes provide an extensive
overview of different types of disaffection, even if the
selection is not exhaustive.
A Conjoint Analysis of Elite Transgressions
Conjoint analysis has become a popular tool within
political science since it offers a way to test multidi-
mensional causal relations for a variety of purposes
including candidate choice, policy evaluations and
participatory mechanisms (Hainmueller et al. 2014,
Franchino and Zucchini 2015,Christensen 2020,
Kirkland and Coppock 2018,Breitenstein 2019). In a
conjoint analysis, respondents evaluate sets of alterna-
tiveswithrandomlyvariedattributes(Hainmueller et al.
2014). The attributes are the characteristics assumed to
affect evaluations and the levels are discrete categories
describing theoretically relevant values of the attribute in
question. Although such experimental approaches po-
tentially suffer from a lack of external validity, a study
comparing effects from survey experiments with a nat-
ural experiment showed that the hypothetical scenarios
did remarkably well in predicting real-life effects
(Hainmueller, Hangartner and Yamamoto 2015).
The use of conjoint analysis is warranted for the
present purpose (Hainmueller et al. 2014). It is possible to
examine the effects of multiple traits on evaluations,
meaning we can assess differences between the impacts of
democratic transgressions and compare effects to other
potential attributes. The conjoint design mimics the sit-
uation that voters face in elections where they are
choosing between several candidates (Mares and Young
2019,Graham and Svolik 2020). This increases the face
validity of the conjoint experiment, especially in Finland
where the electoral system entails that voters are accus-
tomed to choosing between candidates rather than parties
(Christensen et al. 2020). Conjoint analysis also makes it
possible to limit problems with social desirability bias,
which often present a challenge when examining sensitive
questions in surveys, including biases against female
candidates (Ono and Yamada 2018), or voting for corrupt
candidates (Breitenstein 2019). Since it is not necessary to
ask respondents directly for their preferences on the given
attributes, it is more likely that they will answer truthfully.
Finally, conjoint analysis also makes it possible to assess
differences across subgroups in the population
(Hainmueller et al., 2014), which is a central part of the
current endeavors.
In the choice-based conjoint design used here, re-
spondents were presented with comparisons of two pro-
files presented as prospective prime ministers and were
asked to pick the profile they would prefer as prime
minister of Finland.
2
Since we are here interested in the
factors shaping citizens’general evaluations of Finnish
political elites and their actions, we did not construe the
comparison as a voting decision, as is often the case in the
literature (Breitenstein 2019,Christensen et al. 2020,
Kirkland and Coppock 2018). We did, however, ask a
follow-up question whether people would also vote for the
leader selected, which we use as a robustness check.
Each of the profiles was constructed by randomizing
the attribute levels of seven attributes included in our
conjoint, as shown in Table 1. These attributes and at-
tribute levels consist of theoretically informed discrete
values that are likely to affect evaluations of prospective
prime ministers. Each respondent was asked to make six
such evaluations.
We include two forms of democratic transgressions.
The first concerns violence against opposition politicians
since it is a basic democratic norm that political violence
has no place in democratic societies. Here, the first level
involves a clear condemnation of violence against op-
position candidates; the second level describes the ab-
sence of such condemnations, while the third involves the
profile inciting violence against opposition candidates to
grasp the extent of the commitment to democratic norms.
The other democratic transgression concerns the rule of
law and the basic democratic principle that politicians
should respect the insulation of judicial officials from
political pressure (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018,Mettler and
Lieberman 2020). This attribute includes two levels: one
where the profile clearly states that decisions from judicial
officials must be respected even when they may have a
negative effect on policies advanced by his/her party, while
the other level is the abstention of such promises in the case
where the decision could have adverse effects for policies
advanced by the party that the politicians represents.
These attributes include clear transgression of key
democratic norms. For the inferences from conjoint ex-
periments to be valid, the treatments should be realistic to
the respondents (Mares and Young 2019). Even though
our examples are rather extreme, violence against poli-
ticians has become increasingly common in established
European democracies and in Finland. In the run up to the
2019 parliamentary elections in Finland, electoral can-
didates were physically attacked during campaign events
even though political violence had until then been rare
(Wass et al. 2020). However, based on the considerations
above, it remains unclear how the general population reacts
when confronted with such democratic transgressions.
To gauge the importance of policy congruence, we
include a policy position that has been prominent in recent
years, namely, policy position on immigration (Norris and
Inglehart 2019: 175–206). Here, there are also three
levels, as the leaders can promise to decrease number of
immigrants, maintain the status quo, or increase the
number of immigrants. We also include ideological
placement on a left/right scale (leftist, centrist, and
Saikkonen and Christensen 5
rightist) to gauge the importance of ideological congru-
ence. To examine the importance of congruence, these two
attributes are aligned with respondents’answers to similar
questions, as described below.
While these attributes are central for the current purposes,
we include other attributes to present a complete leader profile
to make the assessments more realistic for the respondents.
We also include basic background characteristics that
are common to include in conjoint experiments of can-
didate evaluations (Kirkland and Coppock 2018,
Breitenstein 2019,Christensen et al. 2020): gender (male
vs female), education (low, intermediate, high educational
attainment). While these attributes are important for
creating realistic profiles, the substantial impact is of less
interest in this case, and we do not here offer specific
hypotheses for their effects on favorability.
Finally, we include an attribute gauging the extent of
populism of the prospective leaders since this has been a
major component in explaining the lure of anti-democratic
politicians.
3
Based on the definition of Mudde (2004:
543), we divide this attribute into three levels, where the
profile promises that decisions will reflect either the de-
mands of ordinary people, compromises between political
elites or compromises between different interests in so-
ciety. While this simple distinction does not capture all
possible connotations of populism, it adds extra con-
ceptual validity that the two latter levels include a
“compromise”since this is frequently seen as contrary to
populism (Mudde 2004: 544, Rostbøll 2020).
Some combinations of attribute levels may be im-
possible or highly implausible, which can make it nec-
essary to exclude certain combinations from occurring
(Hainmueller et al. 2014). While some of the combina-
tions here may seem unlikely to occur in contemporary
politics (e.g., a leader being both leftist and in favor of
restricting immigration), none of them are logically im-
possible, and therefore, no restrictions were added to the
randomization, as is also recommended by Hainmueller
et al. (2014).
Data, Variables, and Methods
Presentation of Survey
The data for testing our hypotheses come from a
conjoint experiment embedded in a survey distributed
to a representative sample of the Finnish population
when it comes to age, gender, and region of living, as
shown in the appendix (n= 1030).
4
Since the sample
matches the general population well, we do not employ
weighting when analyzing the results. The design with
1030 respondents performing six tasks and a maximum
of three attribute levels entails that for H1a and H1b, we
can estimate relatively small effects sizes of AMCE =
0.03, or changes in favorability of 3 percentage points,
with an estimated statistical power of 81%, and effects
sizes of AMCE = 0.04 with a statistical power of 95%,
as shown in the appendix (Lukac and Stefanelli 2020).
Table 1. Conjoint attributes and attribute levels.
Role Attribute Levels (R = reference category)
Democratic norm Violence against
opposition
1. Condemns physical attacks against opposition candidates (R)
2. Does not condemn physical attacks on opposition candidates
3. Incites physical attacks against opposition candidates.
Democratic norm Decisions of judicial
officials
1. Must be respected even if they may have a negative effect on policies advanced by
his/her party (R)
2. Do not have to be respected if they may have a negative effect on policies
advanced by his/her party
Ideological
congruence
Ideology 1. Leftist (R)
2. Centrist
3. Rightist
Policy congruence Position on immigration
policy
1. Reduce number of immigrants (R)
2. Maintain number of immigrants at current level
3. Increase number of immigrants
Background Gender 1. Female (R)
2. Male
Background Education 1. Low (R)
2. Intermediate
3. High
Populism Decisions will reflect 1. Demands of ordinary citizens (R)
2. Compromises between political elites
3. Compromises between relevant social groups
6Political Research Quarterly 0(0)
Hence, the study is well-powered to correctly detect
causal effects of a magnitude where the effects have
concrete implications. We were unable to perform
similar power analysis for our subgroup analyses since
group sizes were unknown beforehand, which means
some groups have a relatively low number of respon-
dents. There is therefore still a need to examine whether
these results can be replicated in studies with more
powerful research designs. The data was collected
between27Mayand1June2020viaanonlinepanel
recruited through Qualtrics. In the survey, the re-
spondents first completed basic socio-demographic
information, before being asked a series of questions
about their general political attitudes and preferences.
Following this, the respondents completed the conjoint
experiment.
Finland constitutes a fitting case for examining how
transgressions of democratic norms affect evaluations
of political leaders for two reasons. First, Finland is a
multiparty parliamentary democracy where large coa-
litions and consensual politics are deeply ingrained
political norms (Karvonen 2014) and is thereby pro-
vides an example of “consensual”political system
(Lijphart 2012). This consensus system is likely to
affect how citizens perceive violations of established
democratic norms. Ideological polarization has been
rather low in Finland in comparative context (Isotalo
et al. 2020,Reiljan 2020,Fornaro 2021). Even though
affective polarization has increased in Finland recently,
it “still remains on a moderate level when looked at
from an international perspective”(Kekkonen and Yl¨
a-
Anttila 2021,5,seealsoReiljan 2020 and Wagner
2021). This makes for an important contrast to the
previous literature that has studied citizens’propensity
to support democratic norms mostly in highly polarized
contexts such as the United States and Venezuela and
has argued that individual-level political polarization
drives citizens’willingness to overlook democratic
violations (Svolik 2019,2020,Graham and Svolik
2020, on polarization see also Levitsky and Ziblatt
2018,Mettler and Lieberman 2020). Second, if we
expect voters to defend democratic principles and ju-
dicial independence, this should be especially salient in
a context where trust in democracy and democratic
institutions is high. Finnish voters report one of the
highest levels of democratic satisfaction in Europe, and
the level of satisfaction has remained rather stable over
time (B¨
ack et al. 2016;Karvonen 2014,Kestil¨
a-
Kekkonen 2015,Rapeli and Koskimaa 2020). The
level of political trust among the Finnish voters is also
particularly high in the European context (Kestil¨
a-
Kekkonen 2015,S¨
oderlund 2019). Both aspects en-
tail that we consider Finland to be a “least-likely case”
for tolerance for violations of democratic norms.
Variables
The dependent variable is whether a given profile was
chosen or not in a comparison. All attribute levels are
coded as dummy variables indicating whether the attribute
in question was shown or not. The randomization of the
attribute levels across respondents entail that it is un-
necessary to include control variables to ascertain the
causal effects (Hainmueller et al. 2014). However, it is
often valuable to examine differences in effect sizes across
subgroups since there may be important differences in
effects for certain groups (Abramson et al. 2019,
Hainmueller et al., 2014,Leeper et al. 2020). Since these
variables are observed rather than randomized, we can
only observe whether differences in effects exist de-
pending on the characteristics, not ascertain that the
moderator variables cause the observed differences in
effects (Kam and Trussler, 2017: 793).
In line with our hypotheses, we examine differences in
effects across two types of congruence: Ideological
congruence and immigration policy congruence, and three
types of political disaffection: Political trust, satisfaction
with democracy and external political efficacy.
5
Ideological congruence is constructed based on the
attribute ideology and a survey question where respon-
dents indicated their ideological left-right placement on a
scale coded 0–10 (10 furthest to the right). The variable
ideological congruence has four categories: 1) Mismatch
(respondent and profile had different ideological posi-
tions,
6
66.7%); 2) Both leftist (profile was leftist and
respondent indicated 0–4 on the scale, 11.0%); 3) Both
centrist (profile was centrist and respondent chose 5 on the
scale, 10.4%); and 4) Both rightist (profile was rightist and
respondent chose 6–10 on the scale, 11.9%).
The immigration policy congruence variable is con-
structed based on the attribute immigration policy and an
index ranging from 0 to 8 based on two questions where
respondents indicated their attitudes to immigrant workers
and asylum seekers on five-point Likert scales (higher
scores indicates more positive attitudes to immigration).
The immigration congruence variable also has four cat-
egories: 1) Mismatch (respondent and profile had different
attitudes to immigration, 66.7%); 2) Both pro-immigration
(profile promised to increase number of immigrants and
respondent scored 5–8 on the index, 12.4%); 3) Both in-
termediate (profile promised to maintain the status quo and
respondent scored 4 on the index, 8.9%); and 4) Both anti-
immigration (Profile promised to lower the number of im-
migrants and respondent scored 0–3 on the index, 12.1%).
Political trust is measured with an index based on
respondents’trust in parliament, politicians, political
parties, and government (each item scored 0–10, index 0–
40, Cronbach’s alpha = 0.94). The respondents were
classified into three categories based on their scores:
Saikkonen and Christensen 7
Disaffected (0–14, 19.6%), Intermediate (15–25, 38.4%),
Satisfied (26–40, 42.0%). Satisfaction with democracy is
measured with a single item where respondents indicate
their level of satisfaction with the way democracy works
in Finland on a scale 0–10. Respondents who indicate 0–4
are classified as Disaffected (18.4%), those who pick 5 are
classified as intermediate (10.8%), while those scoring 6–
10 are classified as Satisfied (70.9%). For external effi-
cacy, we form an index based on answers to three
questions scored on a five-point Likert scale (1. Elected
representatives quickly forget the worries of ordinary
citizens, 2. Citizens’opinions are considered in political
decision-making, 3. Politicians do not care about the
opinions of ordinary people, Cronbach’s alpha = 0.75).
The index ranging 0–12 was constructed so that higher
scores indicate a higher level of external efficacy. Here,
respondents scoring 0–3 were classified as Disaffected
(37.4%), 4–6 as Intermediate (44.4%) and those scoring
7–12 were regarded as Satisfied (18.3%).
Methods of Analysis
All analyses are linear regression analyses with standard
errors clustered at the respondent level to consider that
each of the 1030 respondents provides six evaluations of
two profiles (Hainmueller et al. 2014). Due to the ran-
domization of attributes, the coefficients can be interpreted as
Average Marginal Component Effect (AMCE), which de-
scribes how much the probability of choosing a leader profile
would change on average if one of the leader’s attributes
were switched from the reference category to the particular
attribute level (Hainmueller et al. 2014).
These are population averages, but there may be im-
portant differences in effects across subgroups (Leeper
et al. 2020). As outlined above, we are interested in
differences across ideological congruence, policy con-
gruence, and political disaffection. To determine whether
there are differences in effects, interaction terms between
the attributes and the relevant groups are included
(Hainmueller et al. 2014). This conditional AMCE shows
effect sizes for the different groups. To assess the im-
plications of the interaction effects, we rely on formal tests
of significance and assess practical implications by seeing
whether the effects have similar magnitudes and direc-
tions for different values of the moderator (Kam and
Franzese, 2007).
Afinal measure of interest is the marginal mean, which
describes the level of favorability toward leaders with a
particular feature level when ignoring all other features
(Leeper et al. 2020). While the AMCE depend on the
reference category used, the marginal mean allows us to
verify the popularity of a given attribute level in de-
scriptive terms without using a reference category, which
may be somewhat arbitrary and can lead to misleading
interpretations when assessing differences across sub-
groups (Leeper et al. 2020).
As recommended by Hainmueller et al. (2014),we
report the results in coefficient plots. The estimates are
indicated by dots with lines indicating the 95% confidence
intervals to show the uncertainty surrounding this esti-
mate. For the AMCEs, there is a vertical line at 0, and
when the confidence intervals cross this line, it entails that
the effect is not statistically significant at p< 0.05. For the
marginal means, the line is at 0.5 since this indicates the
point where less than half of the respondents prefer this
option when presented with it. The full regression results
are included in the appendix.
Analysis
As a prelude to the conjoint analysis, we in Figure 1
present descriptive evidence to respondents’opinions on
basic democratic norms. This is based on the extent of
agreement with some statements on basic democratic
norms.
An overwhelming majority of Finns express support
for basic democratic norms when asked directly. It is at
most 19% who do not agree that the judiciary should not
be the target of political pressure, 94% agree that poli-
ticians should treat each other with respect. If we combine
all questions to an index with higher scores indicating
higher support for democratic principles and norms
ranging from 0 to 18, the mean is 14.5 and only 5% of
respondents score 9 or less on the index. This clearly
demonstrates that Finns support democratic norms when
they are asked directly. The question is whether this
support is also evident when asking them for implicit
preferences in a conjoint experiment. The results for the
first pair of hypotheses are shown in Figure 2.
The results as expected show that violating democratic
norms has negative effects on favorability. For violence
against opposition politicians, a leader who does not
condemn the use of violence is 13 percentage points worse
of (AMCE = 0.13, p= 0.000) while a leader who incites
violence loses 27 percentage points (AMCE = 0.27, p=
0.000), comparing each to a leader who condemns the use
of violence. However, the marginal means reveal that
while a leader who incites violence is picked about 36% of
the time, a leader who does not condemn violence is
picked about 50% of time, showing that the consequences
of such less explicit democratic transgression are less
severe. Even if people prefer a leader who clearly con-
demns violence, many are willing to ignore not con-
demning physical attacks when selecting a leader. When
prospective leaders indicate that court decisions do not
have to be respected under all circumstances, they drop 14
percentage points compared to leaders who respect court
decisions (AMCE = 0.14, p= 0.000). The marginal
8Political Research Quarterly 0(0)
means entail that a leader who respects court decisions is
picked 57% of the time regardless of other attributes while
a leader who makes no such promise is selected 43% of
the time. These effect sizes are large, entailing that, on
average, Finns strongly punish politicians for explicit
democratic violations.
However, we have hypothesized that ideological and
policy congruence may moderate reactions to
democratic violations by politicians. We therefore
move on to exploring H2a and b concerning differences
across policy position congruence and H3a and b on
ideological congruence on the left-right dimension in
Figure 3.
The two upper panes show conditional AMCEs and
marginal means for policy congruence. There are no
significant interaction terms for respecting judicial
Figure 1. Approval of democratic norms.
Figure 2. Direct effects of norm transgressions (AMCEs and marginal means).
Saikkonen and Christensen 9
independence. For violence against opposition, the neg-
ative impact is stronger for pro-immigration congruence
and both not condemning violence (B = 0.08, p= 0.009)
and inciting violence (B = 0.16, p= 0.000). The mar-
ginal means show that policy congruence entails that
respondents will often pick leaders even when they
transgress basic democratic norms. This is clearest when
both leader and respondent are anti-immigration, where
leaders who incite violence against opposition politicians
are picked 56% of the time they are shown, while the
corresponding figure for not respecting judicial officials is
59% and for not condemning violence it is 67%. Hence,
people are willing to ignore even major democratic
transgressions when there is agreement on reducing the
number of immigrants. Intermediate and pro-immigration
policy congruence also means that people are willing to
ignore some transgressions. When there is pro-
immigration congruence, people pick leaders who fail
to condemn violence 51% of the time and status quo
congruence entails that people select such leaders 56% of
the time. However, these groups are less willing to se-
lected leaders inciting violence, indicating that policy
congruence does not override this type of transgression.
This shows that it is important to be aware of the different
types of transgression and their severity.
A similar pattern can be observed in the two lower
panes, which show the corresponding results for ideo-
logical congruence. There are no significant interaction
terms for respecting the decisions of judicial officials, but
for violence against the opposition, there are significant
interaction terms for profiles not condemning attacks and
centrist congruence (B = 0.12, p= 0.001) and rightist
congruence (B = 0.08, p= 0.015). While the differences
for the conditional AMCEs appear small, the marginal
means show that people are more likely to pick leaders
even when they commit democratic transgressions when
there is ideological congruence. People generally prefer
leaders who condemn violence, but when there is ideo-
logical congruence, people select leaders who do not
condemn violence more than 50% of the times such a
profile is shown. For leftist congruence, it is even 61% of
the time that such a profile is selected. Leaders who do not
promise to respect judicial officials are also selected about
52% of the time when there is leftist ideological con-
gruence and 49% of the time when there is rightist
ideological congruence with the leader profile. Hence,
while people prefer leaders who abide by democratic
norms, ideological congruence appears to be more im-
portant than democratic principles when they evaluate
potential political leaders.
We now turn to H4a and b and differences in effects
across political disaffection. Figure 4 shows the results.
The results for political trust and satisfaction with
democracy are generally in line with the expectations. For
violence against opposition politicians, there are signifi-
cant interaction terms for satisfaction when it comes to
Figure 3. Differences in effects of norm transgressions depending on policy congruence and ideological congruence (conditional
AMCEs and marginal means).
10 Political Research Quarterly 0(0)
political trust and both not condemning (B = 0.07, p=
0.024) and inciting violence (B = 0.14, p= 0.000). The
same is true for satisfaction with democracy, where the
effects differ for not condemning violence (B = 0.06, p=
0.030) and inciting violence (B = 0.13, p= 0.000). For
disrespecting judicial officials, we find significant inter-
action terms for the satisfied when it comes to political
trust (B = 0.07, p= 0.006) and satisfaction with de-
mocracy (B = 0.06, p= 0.018). These differences in
effects entail that satisfied citizens (i.e., those with high
trust and/or satisfaction with democracy) are more likely
to condemn democratic transgressions. These effects are
more muted, albeit still negative, among those who are
disaffected.
The situation is slightly different for external political
efficacy where there are no significant interaction terms.
While there is thus no clear-cut evidence for differences
depending on the level of efficacy, the pattern largely
resembles the one found for the other items since the
satisfied are less likely to pick leader who commit
democratic transgressions.
Robustness Checks
We performed various robustness checks to ascertain the
robustness of these results. The results are shown in the
online appendix, and we only outline the most relevant
findings here.
First, the choice-based conjoint format used here
means that respondents may be forced to select a leader
profile that they do not really like. We therefore also asked
a follow-up question after each round, where we asked
respondents whether they would also vote for the leader
they had just selected. This is a more demanding test of the
impact of democratic transgressions since respondents get
two chances to rebuff unjustifiable elite behavior. We
reran the analyses for the follow-up question only for the
candidates picked in the choice-based conjoint, meaning
the number of units of analysis is halved from 12,360 to
6180. The results are shown in Figures A2–A4 in the
online appendix. As might be expected, the effects are
generally weaker when concerned with voting since some
indicate they would not vote for the selected profile.
Nevertheless, the marginal means show that almost 30%
of the respondents would also vote for a selected leader
profile who violates central democratic principles, which
may still be a cause for concern.
The patterns are generally similar for voting propensity
when examining the corresponding results for ideological
and policy congruence. Anti-immigration and right-wing
congruence in particular entail that people are willing to
overlook democratic transgressions and vote for a leader
regardless. A leader who does not condemn violence is
picked more than 40% when there is policy congruence,
and slightly less than 40% of the time when he/she incites
violence. While we should not interpret such percentages
Figure 4. Differences in effects of norm transgressions across political disaffection (conditional AMCEs and marginal means).
Saikkonen and Christensen 11
as vote shares (Abramson et al. 2019), it nonetheless
indicates that many are willing to ignore democratic in-
civilities to achieve their desired policy goals. The results
for political disaffection are also similar since those with
high satisfaction are generally much less likely to accept
democratic transgressions, although the differences are
not as pronounced as in the forced choice conjoint.
Overall, we take these results to mean that the findings
are not solely an artifact of the forced choice conjoint
design.
Another important aspect is to examine whether effects
are similar across rounds and independent of placement of
the profile (left–right) since it could affect the findings
when there are systematic differences (Hainmueller et al.
2014). The results reported in Figure A5 show that there is
no uniform trend for differences, meaning we are confi-
dent such differences do not bias the results.
Concluding Discussion
Our results contribute to the emerging line of scholarship
on citizens reactions to democratic violations by politi-
cians (Carey et al. 2020,Svolik 2020,Graham and Svolik
2020), as well as the earlier literature on the link between
democratic disaffection and democratic system support
(see, e.g., Norris 1999,2011).
First, we examined the support of Finnish citizens of
several key aspects of democracy when these were
measured by answers to standard direct survey questions.
We found that an overwhelming majority supported core
democratic principles when asked directly. However, the
results were much more nuanced when the support for
democratic principles was measured indirectly via a
conjoint experiment. The results for our conjoint exper-
iment generally support the notion that clear democratic
transgressions are punished by the public. However, the
results also reveal that less explicit violations, where
leaders fail to condemn violence against opposition
politicians, can go unpunished by people as these are still
picked about 50% of the time. These results support the
contention that direct survey questions may not capture
the extent of “true”democratic support in established
democracies (Svolik 2020,Graham and Svolik 2020).
While people generally agree with basic democratic
norms when asked directly, many will fail to act in ac-
cordance with these beliefs when put in a position where it
is necessary to make a trade-off between democratic ideals
and specific policy goals. This “trade-off”mechanism,
which has also been found in previous literature (see, e.g.,
Breitenstein 2019,Graham and Svolik 2020), suggests
that people are willing to support undemocratic or corrupt
politicians when these politicians are co-partisans or
deliver other benefits to the voters.
In line with this notion, we find that people are more
willing to ignore even serious and explicit violations when
they agree with a potential leader either ideologically or
on the policy issue of immigration. While people gen-
erally prefer leaders who do not transgress democratic
norms, many are willing to overlook not condemning
violence or disrespecting judicial officials when there is
ideological congruence or a respondent and the potential
leader both agree that immigration should be restricted.
Our results show that the respondents who are opposed to
immigration are willing to overlook even blatantly au-
thoritarian behavior by a prospective political leader, that
is, inciting violence against the opposition, when this
leader is also in favor of curtailing immigration. The issue
of immigration appears to be such an important policy
issue (a kind of “lexicographic preference”) for some
citizens that it overrides all other political dimensions.
These results thereby may help explain the apparent
success of political leaders who violate basic democratic
norms in several established democracies.
We have here extended previous findings to Finland, a
stable democracy with a consensual political culture,
which may be considered a least likely case for this sort of
mechanism to operate. However, even here we find that
some people are willing to ignore serious violations of
basic democratic norms when leaders represent policies or
ideological positions that these people concur with. This
does not bode well for democracy in less stable political
regimes plagued by intense social conflicts. Under such
circumstances, large parts of the electorate may become
open for ignoring, or even openly supporting, violations
of democratic principles if leaders otherwise appear able
to deliver political outcomes that correspond to popular
demand (see McCoy and Somer 2019,Svolik 2019 and
2020).
Finally, we examine the extent to which political
disaffection moderates the impact of democratic trans-
gressions. The results here show that the effects of
democratic transgressions are more severe when people
have high political trust and/or satisfaction with democ-
racy, while the disaffected do not as strongly condemn
transgressions. While low trust and/or satisfaction with
democracy does not necessarily entail low commitment to
democracy per se, these results show that citizens who are
satisfied with democratic performance will act as
guardians of democracy, whereas the disaffected are more
likely to be passive bystanders. It would seem there is little
protection to be had from the critical citizens some suggest
should be more eager to protest basic democratic norms
(Inglehart 1997,Norris 1999). This thereby indicates that
even if disaffection does not necessarily constitute a direct
threat to democracy, it can erode the mechanisms that
ensure that leaders respect basic democratic norms.
12 Political Research Quarterly 0(0)
These findings come with some caveats. While con-
joint experiments are well suited for examining multidi-
mensional political choices, they are limited in the number
of attributes that can be included in the experimental
setting. We were only able to examine the policy issue of
migration, which may be said to occupy a particular role in
contemporary political discourse in most democracies.
There is therefore a need to examine in greater detail
whether other policy areas can play a similar role, and if
so, under what circumstances. There is also a need to
examine further what citizen characteristics explain the
propensity to forgive transgressions of democratic norms.
Here, a focus on diffuse support for democracy (Easton
1965) versus preferences for more authoritarian regimes
may constitute a promising avenue of future research.
Furthermore, while both ideological and affective po-
larization have been low in Finland by comparative
standards (Isotalo et al. 2020,Reiljan 2020,Wagner
2021), recent studies have shown that affective polari-
zation has been increasing in Finland, although it is still at
a comparatively moderate level (Kekkonen and Yl¨
a-
Anttila 2021). Further research is therefore needed to
probe the potential links between affective polarization
and the support for democracy in established democracies.
Despite these limitations, our results contribute to the
growing number of studies examining the mechanisms of
democratic backsliding in contemporary democracies.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers
as well as the participants in the General Research Seminar at the
Department of Political Science,
˚
Abo Akademi University, for
helpful comments on the paper, as well as friends and colleagues
for helpful feedback during the experimental design process.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with re-
spect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article:
This work was supported by the Academy of Finland (Grant
285167 and Grant 316897).
ORCID iDs
Inga A-L Saikkonen https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2303-0328
Henrik Serup Christensen https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2916-
0561
Supplementary Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
Notes
1. The phrasing of these hypotheses was altered slightly from the
preregistration since we in the preregistration used the term
“candidate”rather than “leader,”but the intention is identical.
2. A preregistration of the experiment was done at https://osf.io/
f6gr4. Deviations from the preregistration are noted in the text and
are compiled in the online appendix. Data and Stata Do-file for the
replication of all analyses can be accessed at https://osf.io/3f49x/.
3. This aspect is to be examined in more detail in a separate
paper.
4. This type of study does not require ethical approval according
to the guidelines of Finnish National Board on Research
Integrity when participants give informed consent, and the
study does not violate physical integrity, does not involve
minors, does not expose participants to exceptionally strong
stimuli, and does not cause harm or a safety risk for par-
ticipants or their families (https://tenk.fi/en/ethical-review/
ethical-review-human-sciences).
5. In the preregistration, we also present hypotheses for dif-
ferences across generations, but this will now be examined in
a separate paper.
6. Since our interest here is to examine the impact of congruence
rather than mismatch, we do not distinguish between different
types of mismatch (i.e., leftist respondent and rightist profile).
This is also the case for the policy congruence variable.
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Author Biographies
Inga Saikkonen is Academy of Finland Research Fellow
in the Social Science Research Institute,
˚
Abo Akademi
University. She holds a DPhil. in Politics from the Uni-
versity of Oxford. Her research interests include de-
mocratization, democratic backsliding, electoral
authoritarian regimes, and electoral clientelism.
Henrik Serup Christensen is Senior lecturer in political
science at
˚
Abo Akademi University in
˚
Abo, Finland. His
research interests include political participation and the
consequences for the functioning of democracy.
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