Young people are less supportive of democracy and more tolerant of a wide range of undemocratic practices

Recent scholarship has highlighted growing concerns about the erosion of democratic norms and values, particularly among younger citizens. This research agenda remains ambiguous, however, especially regarding the extent to which young people’s democratic disconnect results in a shift towards undemocratic politics. In this research, I rely on a multi-method approach to examine differences in democratic attitudes across age groups. Using observational and experimental data, I provide robust cross-national evidence that younger citizens’ support for democracy is substantially lower than older citizens. Building on these findings, I further demonstrate that youth are far more tolerant of a wide range of undemocratic practices and democratic norm violations. Lastly, I present the results of a conjoint experiment which confirms that younger citizens have significantly lower preferences for democratic societal attributes when compared to their older counterparts. Substantively, these findings contribute to a growing literature on the vulnerability of consolidated democracies to younger peoples’ shifting attitudes towards democratic institutions and norms.