Democracy at Risk

How Terrorist Threats Affect the Public

Elizabeth J Zechmeister author Jennifer L Merolla author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:The University of Chicago Press

Published:27th Oct '09

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Democracy at Risk cover

How do threats of terrorism affect the opinions of citizens? Speculation abounds, but until now no one had marshaled hard evidence to explain the complexities of this relationship. Drawing on data from surveys and original experiments they conducted in the United States and Mexico, Jennifer L. Merolla and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister demonstrate how our strategies for coping with terrorist threats significantly influence our attitudes toward fellow citizens, political leaders, and foreign nations. The authors reveal, for example, that some people try to restore a sense of order and control through increased wariness of others - especially of those who exist outside the societal mainstream. Additionally, voters under threat tend to prize 'strong leadership' more highly than partisan affiliation, making some politicians seem more charismatic than they otherwise would. The authors show that a wary public will sometimes continue to empower such leaders after they have been elected, giving them greater authority even at the expense of institutional checks and balances. Having demonstrated that a climate of terrorist threat also increases support for restrictive laws at home and engagement against terrorists abroad, Merolla and Zechmeister conclude that our responses to such threats can put democracy at risk.

"This book brings good contemporary social science to the public debate about the role of terror in the modern democracy. In the natural world, we typically see that people who find terrorism threatening will be more likely to support authoritarian and security-minded policies, but it is hard to say how much of this set of beliefs stems from a genuine concern about terrorism rather than personality or political interests. Merolla and Zechmeister's original experiments give real purchase on these questions." - Michael MacKuen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"

ISBN: 9780226520551

Dimensions: 23mm x 16mm x 2mm

Weight: 425g

280 pages