Why Citizens Punish Radical-Right Views: Social Sanctions, Not Confrontation

Why Political Norms Hold?

Vicente Valentim (BJPS) investigates what keeps political norms — shared beliefs about which opinions and behaviors are socially acceptable — in place within democracies. The study focuses on norms against radical-right preferences, a well-established boundary in many democracies, and asks how ordinary citizens detect and enforce breaches of those norms.

What Valentim Did

The paper uses a survey in Spain in which respondents viewed pictures of individuals presented as holding different political views and reported their reactions. This design isolates how respondents evaluate and respond to visible signals of political preference. Measures include expressed disapproval and willingness to impose social sanctions on the pictured individuals.

Key Findings

• Respondents express stronger disapproval of radical-right preferences than of other political positions.
• Greater disapproval of radical-right views translates into a higher likelihood of social sanctioning.
• Sanctions are predominantly indirect — actions that avoid forced interaction with the target (for example, withdrawal of social approval or exclusion) rather than direct confrontation.
• The paper presents evidence on which individual-level characteristics make a respondent more likely to enforce norms, shedding light on who acts as an enforcer in everyday social life.

What This Means for Democratic Politics

By documenting how citizens signal disapproval and apply mostly indirect sanctions, Valentim identifies a micro-level mechanism of social influence that helps stabilize political norms. These everyday enforcement practices help explain why certain political preferences—here, radical-right positions—remain stigmatized in public life, with implications for how political boundaries are maintained and how dissenting voices are socially managed.

Where to Look Next

The study highlights the value of experimental survey designs for tracing norm enforcement and suggests further work on cross-national variation, long-term effects of sanctioning on political behavior, and the consequences for democratic pluralism.