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Political actors have violated fundamental norms openly in numerous instances. Sometimes that leads to them losing support from their constituencies. But often repercussions imposed by followers are relatively weak. Why do some parts of the public not withdraw their support for political actors when they violate group norms? Does the continuous support for the norm-violating actor reduce the norm’s credibility? We put forward an identity-driven theoretical approach and contend that the norms of social groups are not fixed. A group’s norms can only be upheld if there is a perception that large parts of the group condemn violations of these norms. This would imply that a group will no longer support a political actor who violates the group’s norms. Alternatively, we hypothesize that people will either reduce their identification with the identity group (norm > identity) or that people will support the norm less (identity > norm). We test our expectations in a survey of 4000 German citizens. Respondents receive a priming experiment that points out the human rights violations of the European border agency Frontex and that, despite norm violations by Frontex, people with a certain political identity (left or right) still are overwhelmingly supportive of the agency. We then ask respondents about their support for Frontex (the norm violating actor), their view on human rights violations in border security (norm), and their political self-identification (group).

In recent years, political actors across the globe have tried to mobilize citizens' anxiety in support for more fortified, more controlled borders. This paper studies what drives the public support for border security policies, and specifically whether and under what conditions anxiety plays a role in border attitude formation. This is key to understanding the incentives for leaders to engage in bordering practices at a time when fears relating to a globalized world have become a highly salient and contested issue in domestic politics. We argue that people induced to feel anxious display a higher support for closed borders, and for stricter border security measures, especially if the neighboring country is perceived to be more dissimilar from their own and the policy is justified with an external threat. We test our expectations with a survey of 4000 German citizens. Respondents receive sequentially a priming experiment that induces feeling of anxiety, and a conjoint experiment that presents them with pairs of border policy plans, which include information on the policy justification, intended policy measure, and type of neighboring country.

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-cps-10.1177_00104140221088846 for Cross-National Social Influence: How Foreign Votes Can Affect Domestic Public Opinion by Giorgio Malet in Comparative Political Studies

Do voters follow the preferences of foreign mass collectives? Despite the growing research on policy diffusion and theoretical debates on the emergence of transnational public spheres, we know little about the impact of foreign votes on domestic public opinion. Yet, the results of elections and referendums may provide a signal to people in other countries and trigger a process of contagion. This study leverages the coincidence of the 2005 French referendum on the European Constitution and the fieldwork of two surveys to analyze the causal effect of cross-national social influence. Results show that the French rejection increased public opposition to the Constitution abroad. A process of cognitive activation explains why knowledgeable voters also grew Eurosceptic after the vote. These findings attest to the interdependence of national publics and contribute to our understanding of mechanisms of social contagion.