Public Discourse and Autocratization: Infringing on Autonomy, Sabotaging Accountability

33 Pages Posted: 4 Feb 2021

See all articles by Seraphine F. Maerz

Seraphine F. Maerz

University of Gothenburg

Carsten Schneider

Central European University (CEU)

Date Written: February 2021

Abstract

Ever since its existence, democracy is periodically diagnosed to be in crisis. When such crises are analyzed, reference has usually been made to the malfunctioning of core democratic institutions and the behavior of actors. We believe that this fails to capture a crucial element of the current crisis. It is words, not (only) deeds that present the contemporary challenge to liberal democracy even before such challenges materialize in institutional change. There are strong theoretical and empirical reasons to take into account the public discourse of leading political figures when studying democratic decline. In this article, we conceptualize illiberal and authoritarian public rhetoric as language practices that harm democracy. Such a practice-orientated approach allows for fine-graded assessments of autocratizing tendencies in democracies that goes beyond an exclusive focus on democratic institutions. By using a corpus of 4 506 speeches of 25 heads of government from 22 countries and data on government disinformation and party identity, we empirically illustrate with dictionary analysis and logistic regression that illiberal and authoritarian public rhetoric are tightly linked to autocratization and should no longer be ignored.

Suggested Citation

Maerz, Seraphine F. and Schneider, Carsten, Public Discourse and Autocratization: Infringing on Autonomy, Sabotaging Accountability (February 2021). V-Dem Working Paper 112, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3779244 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3779244

Seraphine F. Maerz (Contact Author)

University of Gothenburg ( email )

Viktoriagatan 30
Göteborg, 405 30
Sweden

Carsten Schneider

Central European University (CEU) ( email )

Nador utca 9
Budapest, H-1051
Hungary

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