Two features of American politics are omnipresent in the current media landscape. First, Donald Trump’s rhetoric regarding nonwhites routinely betrays a dehumanizing prejudice. Second, there has been a proliferation of what Duke University law professor Jedediah Purdy sardonically labels “crisis-of-democracy literature,” involving Americans’ apparent rebuke of democratic norms.
Neither social intolerance nor inconsistent support for democratic norms, however, is particularly new. In fact, the one constant thread woven throughout American democracy is that white Americans’ track records regarding matters of racial and democratic equality is poor.
To what extent, then, is prejudice related to negative assessments of democracy? Analyzing World Values Survey data from 1995 to 2011, our recent working paper finds a worrying negative relationship between social intolerance and support for democracy. CONT.
Nicholas Davis (Texas A&M) & Steven Miller (Clemson), Mischiefs of Faction