Selim Erdem Aytaç, Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of International Relations, Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey

Tuesday, October 28, 2025, 13:30 – 15:00

Room 154, Staszic Palace, Nowy Świat 72, Warsaw

Abstract

Democratic backsliding has emerged as a global concern, characterized by widespread erosions in political rights, civil liberties, and electoral integrity. While scholars have theorized that rising affective polarization in many countries contributes to this trend, evidence linking affective polarization to democratic erosion remains mixed. In this study we provide experimental evidence of a causal link between affective polarization and democratic erosion. Drawing on a large, nationally-representative survey in Turkey, we combine depolarization interventions with a candidate conjoint experiment, and show that reducing affective polarization strengthens citizens’ willingness to punish politicians who violate democratic norms, despite no apparent change in democratic attitudes. These effects are consistent across government and opposition supporters and robust across different types of democratic violations. Our findings suggest that affective polarization contributes to democratic backsliding by weakening electoral accountability rather than by eroding democratic values, offering new insights into the mechanisms of contemporary democratic decline.

Selim Erdem Aytaç is an Associate Professor of Political Science in the Department of International Relations at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University.

His research interests lie in political behavior with a focus on electoral accountability and political participation. His work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, and Comparative Political Studies, among others. Prof. Aytaç is the co-author (with Susan Stokes) of Why Bother? Rethinking Participations in Elections and Protests (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Dr. Aytaç is the principal investigator of the ERC project “Affective Polarization and Democratic Attitudes” (2023-2028).