White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy

We generalize the implications of Spencer’s words and what we are observing about American politics and society in the age of Trump into an analysis of the anti-democratic orientations of white Americans across four waves of WVS data from 1995 to 2011. We construct an argument linking social intolerance to anti-democratic orientations, highlighting how perceived outgroup threat to status and material well-being leads to an intolerance from white Americans toward the presence of ethnic/racial outgroups. This becomes a problem for attitudes about democracy since democracy requires extending the “opportunity of access” to politics to these same outgroups that aggrieved white Americans perceive as threatening them. Our analysis of four waves of WVS data finds support for our argument. White Americans who would not want an immigrant/foreign worker, someone who spoke a different language, or someone from a different race as a neighbor are more likely to support strongman rule in the United States, rule of the U.S. government by the army, and are more likely to outright reject having a democracy for the United States. These findings are robust across multiple model specifications we analyze and report in the appendix as well.

Link here.