Both Democrats and Republicans justify undemocratic actions that help their party

A new study suggests that American political divides regarding democratic norms are often driven by which political party stands to gain from bending the rules. However, the research also indicates that apparent differences in how Democrats and Republicans value democracy may depend heavily on the specific issue at hand rather than a fundamental disagreement on democratic principles. The findings were published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Political scientists have long debated how voters evaluate the fairness of the democratic process. A central concept in this field is partisan motivated reasoning. This theory posits that citizens interpret political information in ways that align with their existing group loyalties. When a politician breaks a norm, supporters often find ways to justify the behavior.

Scholars have questioned whether this tendency is symmetrical between the two major American parties. Some researchers argue that both Democrats and Republicans are equally likely to rationalize norm violations that benefit their side. This is known as the Bipartisan Rationalization Hypothesis.

Others argue that the two parties differ psychologically. The Asymmetric Commitment Hypothesis suggests that Republicans may be more willing than Democrats to tolerate undemocratic actions to achieve their goals. A third possibility is that the parties simply prioritize different democratic values. For instance, Democrats might prioritize voter access while Republicans prioritize election security.

Paul E. Teas, a researcher in the Department of Political Science at The University of Chicago, sought to test these competing theories. He designed two experiments to determine if partisan gaps in support for norm violations reflect deep-seated differences in democratic commitment or temporary, issue-specific reactions.

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The first study involved 980 participants recruited online. The sample was balanced between Democrats and Republicans. Teas presented these participants with three hypothetical news vignettes. Each story described a government official violating a democratic norm.

One vignette described a policy to drastically reduce the time allowed for mail-in voting. This represented a violation of voter access. Another scenario described a governor ignoring warnings about hacked voting machines. This represented a violation of election security. The third scenario involved a governor vetoing a popular bill passed by the opposition party. This represented a violation of the norm of compromise.

Teas manipulated the details of these stories for different participants. Some participants read versions where the violation helped their own political party. Others read versions where the violation hurt their party. A control group read versions where the political impact was neutral or unspecified.

The researcher measured how much participants supported or opposed the action. He also asked them to rate how democratic or undemocratic the action was. Finally, he asked them to rate how “fair” the action seemed. This distinction allowed Teas to see if supporters believed the action was truly democratic or simply acceptable for other reasons.

The results of the first study showed evidence of motivated reasoning on both sides. Participants from both parties were less opposed to violations that helped their team. Conversely, they were more opposed to violations that hurt their team. This supports the idea that partisanship colors judgment for nearly everyone.

However, clear asymmetries emerged. Republicans were generally less opposed to the restrictions on mail-in voting than Democrats were. This gap persisted even when the restriction did not explicitly benefit the Republican Party. This suggests a specific hostility toward mail-in voting among Republicans rather than a general rejection of voter access.

Republicans also reacted differently to partisan advantage in this study. They were more responsive to winning than Democrats were. When a violation benefited them, their opposition dropped more sharply than it did for Democrats in similar situations.

Despite supporting these beneficial violations, Republicans did not rate them as “more democratic.” instead, they rated the beneficial violations as “fair.” This finding challenges the idea that partisans always trick themselves into thinking their side is acting democratically. In this case, Republicans appeared to distinguish between what is democratic and what is fair game in political competition.

The pattern regarding mail-in voting supported the idea of principled asymmetry. It appeared that Republicans and Democrats held genuinely different baselines for acceptable behavior regarding that specific issue. Teas conducted a second study to see if these differences applied to other types of democratic violations.

The second study included 1,372 participants. Teas used a fully between-subjects design. This means each participant saw only one specific scenario. The researcher introduced two new types of norm violations to test the generalizability of the first study’s results.

The first new scenario involved a different type of voter access violation. Instead of limiting mail-in ballots, this scenario described a governor cutting funding for election administration. This resulted in shutting down physical polling places in specific areas.

The second scenario involved a violation of political protections. It described a president designating a domestic political group as a terrorist organization. This action would prohibit members of that group from running for public office. As in the first study, these actions were randomly assigned to help, hurt, or have no impact on the participant’s party.

The results of the second study were markedly different from the first. In this experiment, no partisan asymmetry emerged. Democrats and Republicans behaved almost identically. Both groups opposed the violations more when they hurt their party. Both groups supported the violations more when they helped their party.

Unlike the first study, the degree of motivated reasoning was symmetrical. Republicans were not more responsive to partisan advantage than Democrats. Furthermore, Republicans did not show a higher baseline tolerance for closing polling places. This contrasts with their higher tolerance for restricting mail-in ballots in the previous experiment.

The discrepancy between the two studies provides the key insight of the research. If Republicans were inherently less committed to democratic norms, they likely would have shown higher tolerance for violations in both studies. The fact that they did not suggests that the asymmetry observed in the first study was specific to the issue of mail-in voting.

Teas interprets these findings as evidence against fixed psychological differences between the parties. The results support the Bipartisan Rationalization Hypothesis in most contexts. When the specific issue of mail-in voting was removed, both parties engaged in the same level of self-serving justification.

The researcher argues that the unique response to mail-in voting likely stems from the high degree of elite politicization surrounding that specific practice. Political leaders have spent years attacking or defending mail-in ballots. This creates a context where partisans view that specific mechanism with suspicion, regardless of who it benefits in a hypothetical scenario.

These findings imply that public support for democratic norms is not static. It is highly responsive to the political environment. When political elites focus their rhetoric on delegitimizing a specific practice, their followers may become more willing to accept violations of that practice.

There are caveats to this research. The studies relied on hypothetical vignettes. How people say they will react to a news story may differ from how they react to real-world events. Real-world politics involves a constant stream of competing information that these controlled experiments cannot fully replicate.

Additionally, the study focuses on the American political context. The dynamics of polarization in the United States may not apply to other democracies. The specific issues that trigger asymmetric responses, such as mail-in voting, are particular to the current American political landscape.

Future research should investigate why certain issues become flashpoints for asymmetric tolerance. It is not entirely clear why mail-in voting elicits such a different reaction than closing polling places. Understanding the role of elite messaging in shaping these specific attitudes remains a priority for political scientists.

This research offers a nuanced view of American polarization. It rejects the simple narrative that one side is the sole aggressor against democratic norms. Instead, it paints a picture of two political coalitions that are both susceptible to placing victory above process. The differences that do exist appear to be products of the specific political battles of the moment rather than permanent character flaws.

The study, “Partisan or Principled?: Explaining Political Differences in Attitudes About Violations of Democratic Norms,” was authored by Paul E. Teas.