Poster #214 - The Influence of Global Crises on Acceptance of Autocracy in Germany

• In Event: ASC Poster Session II

Abstract

This paper investigates how global conflicts and crises influence public attitudes toward democracy and the acceptance of autocracy. ‘Acceptance of Autocracy’, a new scale developed over several waves of our since 2022 bimonthly conducted representative study ‘People in Germany: International’, is defined by the rejection of democratic norms like open debate and parliamentary oversight, and support for authoritarian leadership.
Results indicate that about 30% of the German population exhibits some level of autocracy acceptance, mostly among AfD (a far-right party) supporters. But this attitude is not only be found among right-wing or lower-educated people but spans across the whole spectrum of all social demographic strata.
Multivariate Analyses show that in addition to concerns about the influx of refugees the degree of experiences of anomic uncertainty and subjective evaluations of key decision-makers as incompetent or unwilling to tackle the current economic, social and political challenges are particularly important contributing factors.
In a survey experiment, we additionally investigated whether statements made by the Ukrainian President about the threats of war in Ukraine and the German Defence Minister about the need for Germany to prepare for future armed conflicts increased the acceptance of autocracy.

Authors

• Katrin Brettfeld, University Hamburg

• Peter Wetzels, University Hamburg

• Thomas Richter, German Institute of Global and Area Studies