Norms, Not Just Performance, Help Authoritarian Regimes Weather Crises

🔎 What This Paper Asks

Does citizen support for the norms and principles of non-democratic regimes help stabilize authoritarian rule? Prior research mainly treats mass support as instrumental—driven by regime performance—leaving the political effects of normative support and its relationship to instrumental support underexplored.

🔍 How the Evidence Was Collected

• Novel experimental evidence from original online surveys fielded in Turkey.
• Complementary observational data used to assess broader patterns.

🧭 Key Findings

• High levels of normative support for the political system are observed in the Turkish data.
• Normative and instrumental forms of support are closely intertwined in the Turkish case, rather than operating independently.
• These intertwined forms of support condition the electoral consequences of poor economic performance: the presence of normative and instrumental attachments alters how economic downturns translate into electoral punishment.

💡 Why This Matters

• Revisits the role of normative support in regime resilience, showing that loyalty to political norms can reduce the costs of staying in power for authoritarian rulers.
• Implications for theories of mass opinion and defection cascades in electoral autocracies: normative attachments may slow or reshape cascades of defection that follow economic shocks.

📌 Takeaway

Normative allegiance to the political system exists at notable levels and, together with performance-based support, helps explain when economic problems lead—or do not lead—to electoral backlash against authoritarian incumbents.