When politicians behave badly: Political, democratic, and social consequences of political incivility

Abstract

Many citizens find politics too uncivil, and incivility is often considered a source of political disaffection. However, research studying these effects almost exclusively relies on survey experiments, which yield contrasting results depending on design choices and do not study downstream consequences for satisfaction with democracy and compliance with public policy. We present a theoretical argument on these downstream consequences and study how citizens respond to political incivility in their real‐life information environment using a multi‐wave survey panel of 6055 Danish citizens with 18,805 interviews spanning 18 months. Using generalized difference‐in‐differences models and a natural experiment, we demonstrate nontrivial adverse effects of political incivility on political trust, satisfaction with democracy, and intentions to comply with policies, while intentions to vote are unaffected. Our results highlight how elite rhetoric shapes support for the political system and policy compliance and pinpoint the potential and pitfalls of survey experiments and our own panel approach.