Despite widespread support for the principles of democracy, democratic norms have been eroding for over a decade, both globally and in the US in particular. We ask whether there are differences in how distressing American liberals, compared to conservatives, have found these declines. More importantly, we ask whether any such differences reflect fundamental asymmetries between political ideologies, or simply the fact that the current political context has different consequences for partisans at different ends of the spectrum. To this end, we examine ideological differences not only in America, but in other countries across the globe. Pre-registered laboratory experiments combined with analyses of World Values Survey data indicate that overall, liberals are more distressed than conservatives by low democracy. At the same time, this pattern emerges most strongly when the ruling party is conservative, and disappears (though it does not flip into its mirror image) when the ruling party is liberal. If democracy is worth protecting, our results suggest that not everyone, everywhere will feel the urgency.
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