Extreme polarisation reduces support for democracy

Lisa Janssen, you are a PhD candidate at Ghent University, and you are working on a topic that is of crucial importance in a year that is full of elections in democracies around the globe.

That’s right. And one crucial element of a democratic election is “loser’s consent”, the losing party’s willingness to voluntarily accept the election result, even though it might not have been the outcome for which they had hoped. We had a good illustration four years ago, when a crowd of Trump supporters attacked and invaded the Capitol building in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. A similar attack happened in Brasilia, two years ago, with the violent attacks by Bolsonaro supporters of federal government buildings...