“I alone can fix it:” the strongman narrative and leader support

Abstract

Politicians want to maintain public support – especially in the context of democratic backsliding. One widely used instrument is the Strongman Narrative (SN): a narrative claiming that a strong leader can improve economic performance. Modeling beliefs about causal processes using directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), the authors study the conditions under which the SN shapes citizens’ support decisions. The authors find a form of “authoritarian legacy:” past support for authoritarian leaders increases the citizen’s incentives to support the leader today. Moreover, believing in the SN increases moderates’ support for the leader. The authors show that the SN is the most desirable narrative for the leader among all three-variable DAGs featuring support, leader strength and economic performance: it ensures the leader enjoys citizens’ support under the broadest set of conditions. The authors extend the model to investigate the consequences of citizens caring about democratic backsliding and find that, unless citizens’ costs of backsliding are sufficiently high, the SN remains the narrative that is the most desirable for the leader.