Anja Neundorf: Nostalgia and the threat to democracy
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Anja Neundorf, professor at University of Glasgow, will give a short lecture on Nostalgia and the threat to democracy.
Is nostalgia a threat to democracy? This study is motivated by the observation that contemporary autocrats evoke memories of past regimes to gather support, to justify their rule and to glorify these non-democratic times. In this project, we aim to test the effects of different types of nostalgia on attitudes towards democracy and populism. More specifically, we argue that yearning for a non-liberal past paves the way for non-liberal attitudes today. However, we still do not fully understand how nostalgia is linked to democratic decay. This project will hence focus on two specific questions: 1) Who is reacting to nostalgia and 2) what are the mechanisms that connect nostalgia for specific regime experiences and political attitudes today? To test this argument, we will conduct a series of online survey experiments fielded in six different countries: The UK, Turkey, Hungary, Czech Republic, Spain and Brazil. In each country about 1,800 respondents are recruited using Facebook advertisement. In the survey experiments, a group of randomly selected respondents is primed on a democratic or authoritarian period of each country. Preliminary results confirm that the salience of authoritarian nostalgia has a negative impact on democratic and populist attitudes.
Anja Neundorf is a Professor of Politics and Research Methods at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. She is currently working on an ERC Consolidator Grant "Democracy under Threat: How Education can Save it" (DEMED). She previously held a position at the University of Nottingham (2013-2019) and a Post-doctoral Prize Research Fellowship in political science at Nuffield College, University of Oxford (2010-2012). She received her PhD from the University of Essex in 2010. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of political behaviour, research methods, and comparative politics.
The CORE Lecture Series is organised by the CORE research group (Citizens, Opinion, Representation, and Elections) at the Department of Comparative Politics. Leading international scholars are invited to present their ongoing research on a broad range of topical issues for the research group.
The seminars are funded by the SAMEVAL grant awarded by the Norwegian Research Council.
The seminar is held on Zoom and is open to all.
Join the Zoom meeting here.
