Rhetorical Stratagems of Democratic Backsliders

• In Event: Donald Trump’s Public Discourse and its Impact on His Leadership and the Polity

Abstract

Do democratic backsliders send signals of their intentions in campaign speeches? Is the language they deploy different from that of other politicians in the emotions their rhetoric provokes, the enemies they identify, and the degree of divisiveness of their messages? We use advanced text-as-data analytical techniques to study the speech of would-be autocrats and populists, as well as those of more conventional politicians. We study the speeches of candidates in the U.S., Latin America, Europe and the U.K., and Australia, among others. Our ultimate goal in this project is to discern any early-warning signals that a given candidate is at heightened risk of undermining democracy, should he or she be elected.

Authors

• Susan C. Stokes, University of Chicago

• Ipek Cinar, University of Chicago

• Andres Uribe, University of Chicago