by: Aykut Ozturk , Steve Finkel , Anja Neundorf and Ericka Ramirez-Rascon
| Building support for democracy and raising awareness about the consequences of its absence is essential to support the process of democratization in autocratic regimes; however, it is not an easy task. While an abstract discussion of the merits of democratic institutions might be ineffective, open discussions of the regime’s authoritarian nature can be counter-productive and dangerous. Our study builds on prospect theory to explore which frames are more effective at building support for democratic institutions in authoritarian contexts. We designed a series of educational interventions that are abstract in promoting democracy as a political system while varying the tone to represent the content in relation to gain, loss and a neutral message. We then conducted an online survey experiment in Turkey with 3,000 respondents. Our results demonstrated that all civic education treatments could successfully build abstract democratic support among respondents. However, only respondents that were assigned to the gain video evaluated Turkey’s regime as more authoritarian and became less likely to vote for the government in an upcoming election. Our paper discusses why this is the case and how this finding contributes to the existing literature on both civic education and public opinion formation under authoritarian regimes. |
Authoritarian Political Systems Group 