Project Title: Framing Democracy: Can Democracy Frames Impact Support for Competition and Inclusion? 

Recent scholarship has warned that the American public’s democratic commitments are weakening, a phenomenon that could pose serious threats of democratic backsliding in the U.S.. In this project, I address these concerns with special attention to the complexity of conceptualizing backsliding as a phenomenon and the difficulties of querying the public about potential backsliding events. Using a mixed method approach, I examine whether explicitly framing and strongly signaling that a policy is good for democracy increases support for the policy.

Selected Publications and Talks:

• “Is the American Public Really Turning Away from Democracy? Backsliding and the Conceptual Challenges of Understanding Public Attitudes. Perspectives on Politics, July 2022 1-12.
• “Multi-Method Research and Democratization Studies: Intellectual Bridges Among Islands of   Specialization” Democratization, Vol 26:1 (2018) 97-139.
• “American Political Development in the Mirror of Europe” in Comparative Area Studies: Methodological Rationales and Cross-Regional Applications, Ariel Ahram, Patrick Köllner, and Rudra Sil eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).