The Authoritarian Predisposition and Liberal Beliefs about Democracy

This research examines how variation in one’s authoritarian predisposition is related to liberal beliefs about democracy. As a concept founded to explain the fall of Weimar Germany and the rise of authoritarian and fascist regimes post-WWI, individual-level authoritarianism is a prime suspect when considering the changing fortunes of liberal-democracy and democratic governance; a concern often expressed in recent literatures dealing with democracy-relevant attitudes and behaviors. While research on authoritarianism is usually focused on (in)tolerance toward outgroups, this article focuses on what people believe about democracy. Using data from the World Values Survey, among other sources, I look at how authoritarianism is related to liberal beliefs about democracy and how a country’s democratic context influences this relationship. While hypotheses I derived from the literature propose that the more authoritarian will hold weaker beliefs that liberal characteristics are required for democracy and that this relationship will be stronger in more democratic countries, the data indicate the opposite: in less liberal-democratic countries, the more authoritarian more strongly believe that liberal characteristics are necessary for democracy; in more liberal-democratic countries this relationship diminishes to the point of insignificant. These findings are discussed in light of the current literature on authoritarianism.