1 - The Puzzle of Authoritarian Popularity

Summary

Under what circumstances do ordinary people prefer to elect illiberal leaders they know will violate individual rights? Why do people sometimes view authoritarian leaders as fair, just, and morally upstanding? This book aims to demonstrate that retributive justice concerns matter for how citizens judge government and how they make decisions about when to engage and comply with government authorities. While economic performance, public goods provision, democratic institutions, and redistribution matter as well, this book argues that retributive justice matters as much and sometimes more than these other criteria. A retributive justice model of citizen engagement has important implications for understanding the conditions under which we might expect populism to increase, interventions promoting citizen participation and government accountability to fail, and state building to succeed. Bridging behavioral and institutional approaches, this book’s retributive justice theory of citizen engagement accounts for authoritarian resilience as well as democratic fragility within a new, unified framework.