Most people who say they support democracy are unwilling to actually pay for it.
April 14, 2026
Original Paper
Support for Democracy: Attitudinal versus Revealed-Preference Measures
SSRN · 6446281
The Takeaway
Global democracy indices are based on survey answers that fall apart when people are faced with real-world trade-offs. This study reveals a massive decoupling between what people say they value and how they actually vote when their personal interests are on the line.
From the abstract
How well do our most frequently employed survey indicators of support for democracy measure that concept? We contrast such conventional, attitudinal measures and revealed-preference measures. The latter are based on voting for candidates in experimentally manipulated scenarios that mimic real-world electoral trade-offs between democratic principles and competing political considerations. We find that all attitudinal measures overstate the depth and breadth of support for democracy around the wor