Democratic Persuasion

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

In the framework of the EUI Political Behaviour Colloquium, this seminar features a paper presentation by Florian Foos (LSE).

Political entrepreneurs put liberal democracy under pressure by fueling concerns and exploiting citizens’ fragile commitment to this system of government. As difficult trade-offs are made apparent in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, we investigate one communicative strategy that political elites who want to defend the principles and practices of self-governance in pluralist societies can pursue. We propose democratic persuasion as an actionable, theory-driven intervention to increase the resilience of citizens' commitment to liberal democracy. "Democratic persuasion" requires that legislators actively make the case for democracy and discuss inherent trade-offs while engaging existing doubts and misperceptions. We invited citizens on facebook to attend one of sixteen Zoom townhalls organised in collaboration with members of the German parliament. Each legislator conducted two town halls and we randomly assigned the townhall, where they employed "democratic persuasion". Results suggest that democratic persuasion increases support for liberal democracy among citizens in the short term.

 The speaker will be presenting on zoom. Participants can follow the talk from Seminar room 2, although space is restricted to a maximum of 13 people on a first-come, first-served basis. The talk will also be live-streamed and participants will receive the zoom link once registered.