When the conversation turned to politics with friends and family in Georgia, Givi Silagadze often found that evidence did little to change political views. Before coming to Florence, he led an analysis team at a research organisation in Tbilisi, giving him access to surveys, figures, and carefully constructed evidence about where the country was heading. Yet, none of it ever seemed to change anyone's mind. "I had all the numbers, all the statistics, and all the arguments, and still I could not convince people not to support the populist incumbent," he says.
Today, as a PhD researcher at the EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences, Givi studies democratic erosion – the gradual process through which democratically elected leaders or parties weaken the courts, the press, and other democratic institutions that keep power in check. Why and how politicians do this is not much of a mystery, since those who hold power generally want to keep and consolidate it. "From the perspective of the elites, it's quite clear why leaders try to undermine democracy," he says. "But why people support such leaders is still a black box that social science needs to unpack."
He came to the question through two countries he knows closely: Georgia, where he grew up and Hungary, where he completed his master’s degree. In both, he watched governing parties win elections, weaken the institutions around them, and manage to retain the support of a large share of voters. The same pattern has appeared in various countries around the globe, including India and the United States. What unsettled him most was that some of those voters were people he knew quite well. "Some of my acquaintances and friends share my values and see the world through a very similar lens," he says. "But when it comes to politics and supporting anti-democratic actors, I cannot fully explain how it is possible to have such divergent preferences."
Why voters tolerate democratic erosion
To answer that, Givi looks at how Georgian voters’ views shifted as the country’s democracy deteriorated in recent years, asking the same people for their opinions at different points in time. One pattern stood out, which some scholars call democratic hypocrisy - "a sizeable part of the electorate is willing to turn a blind eye to undemocratic policies when their favoured party carries them out," he says, "but they would oppose the identical policy if another party were pursuing it."
Part of the reason, he argues, lies in how voters come to see the other side. Disagreement over policies is not the problem per se, and Givi thinks it can even be healthy sometimes. "Debating policies and values can be healthy for democracy, because it shows voters the real differences between the parties," he says. The danger begins when the disagreement becomes personal and the opposing party starts to look like a threat to the country itself. "When you see even a small group of your fellow citizens as an existential threat, some questionable actions start to seem tolerable," he says.
Leaders who set out to erode democracy work hard to encourage that feeling, presenting everyone who opposes them as a single hostile bloc, often as puppets of a foreign power, and once voters believe it, warnings about democratic backsliding have little chance. "If people think there is a real threat on the other side, arguments about what might happen as a result of democracy erosion in 10 or 15 years simply cannot compete with that fear," Givi says. This is why, in his view, supporting such a leader does not necessarily mean wanting a strongman per se. "In their calculation, it may simply be the lesser evil compared with the threat they see in the alternative."
What people mean when they say democracy
Surveys, a popular tool for tracking democratic attitudes, can also hide another problem. People who say they support democracy do not always mean the same thing by it. "Democracy can mean completely different things to different people," Givi says.
For some, it simply means that whatever most people want should happen, while for others it also means that certain rights are protected, whoever wins the vote. "Those who see it as majority rule have some truth to their argument, because in the simplest terms, democracy is rule by the people," he says. "But explaining that not everything in society is up for grabs for a majority is not always easy."
Why shaming voters does not work
Some voters, Givi accepts, know exactly what they are supporting: a small group who hold authoritarian values, want a strong leader and a strict order and who will always be there in every society. His interest lies with the much larger group beside them, who are not authoritarian and here he turns his criticism on people like himself. "Sometimes we, and by that I mean the liberal, educated part of the population, try to stigmatise and embarrass them," he says. "But in the end, they rarely change their minds. They just stop discussing politics with you, and they keep voting for such leaders."
Political scientists have long known that people living under repressive regimes hide their dislike of the ruler, and recent research, including Givi’s own work in progress, suggests the reverse also happens in democracies, where some voters keep their support for undemocratic parties to themselves. For anyone who has tried to win a political argument by stigmatising the other side, the implication is uncomfortable, since what this social pressure seems to produce is not a different vote but a quieter one.
Hungary after Orbán
Hungary has become an important case his research, and it has changed while he has studied it. Viktor Orbán, in power from 2010, became a role model for leaders around the world who wanted to weaken democratic checks, and when his party, Fidesz, lost the April 2026 election, Givi had to rethink his second paper. "What happened in Hungary definitely changed my plans," he says. "Now that Orbán is in opposition, I want to understand how his years in power shaped the political attitudes of Hungarians." It is a question researchers have rarely had the chance to ask, because few episodes of democratic erosion have come to an end in this way.
Asked where he hopes his research will make a difference, Givi is careful not to oversell it, and says he would like it to influence policy but remains sceptical. He is more hopeful about the resilience of democracy itself. "Academics and liberal politicians sometimes portray democracy around the world as doomed and in irreversible decline," he says. "The picture is more nuanced, and there are signs of hope."
Givi Silagadze is a PhD researcher at the EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences. His thesis, ‘Explaining Popular Support for Democracy Erosion’, is supervised by Professor Simon Hix.