Spewing Hate or Speaking Tolerance: How Free Speech Affects Social Norms and Minority Rights

Abstract

This paper provides conceptual arguments and empirical analysis regarding the association between freedom of speech, racial tolerance, and protection of minority rights across countries. Individual level survey results from Afrobarometer and World Values Surveys suggest that a preference for free speech fosters socially tolerant attitudes toward those of another race or ethnic group. At the country-level, aggregated survey data are combined with V-dem's measures of freedom of expression, protection of rights, access to power, and government exclusion. The empirical results suggest that free speech fosters tolerant attitudes, promotes minority legal protections and access to power, and decreases government discrimination. These results are robust to demographic and social controls, country and time fixed effects, and alternative measures of rights' protections and government discrimination.

Keywords: racial tolerance, minority rights, government discrimination