Love for democracy takes time

Citizens' support for democracy is increasing the more time they have spent in it / The habituation effect also applies to dictatorships though

What influences citizens' support for democratic systems? Do experiences with this political system encourage citizens’ democratic conviction? Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln, Professor of Macroeconomics and Development at Goethe University Frankfurt and member of the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, and Matthias Schündeln, Professor of International Economic Policy and holder of the Messe Frankfurt endowed chair, addressed these questions in a recent study that was now published in the journal Science (vol. 347, p. 1145).

The two economists analyzed 380,000 individual-level observations from 104 countries over the years 1994 to 2013 and found that citizens support a democratic system more, the more time they have spent in it. To illustrate the magnitude of the effect, the authors compare the impact of the time somebody has spent in a democracy with an increase in education. It is well known that people with a higher level of education are generally more convinced of a democratic system. As the authors show, the difference in support for democracy between primary and secondary education corresponds to the effect of around 8.5 more years of democratic experience. 

With their results, the two researchers demonstrate that the political system itself affects the political preferences of the people living in it. Therefore, political preferences are (also) endogenous – besides being driven by other factors, such as economic conditions or historical experiences with different political systems. 

For young democracies, for example in the context of the movement referred to as “Arab Spring”, these results imply that it takes some time until the new political system is accepted by the broad public or that an initially weaker support will increase over time. Unfortunately, the habituation effect does not only apply to democracies. “The fact that citizens accept a political system more, the more time they have spent in it, is a general effect that does not depend on the respective political system,” Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln explains. Therefore, also autocratic systems gain citizens' support over time. However, the fact that from time to time we see phases in which radical changes take place shows that there are other factors that can have greater effects on preferences for a certain system than the habituation effect, such as economic hardship or social reprisals.