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Over the last few years, climate change has risen to the top of the agenda in many Western democracies, backed by a growing share of voters supporting climate protection policies. To understand how and why these changes came about, we revisit the question whether personal experiences with increasingly unusual local weather conditions affect people's beliefs about climate change and their related attitudes. We first take a closer look at the theoretical underpinnings and extend the theoretical argument to account for the differential impact of different weather phenomena, as well as the role of prior beliefs and individual reference frames. Applying mixed-effects regressions to a novel dataset combining individual-level multi-wave panel survey data from up to 18,010 German voters collected from 2016 to 2019 with weather data from 514 weather stations, we show that personally experiencing unusual or extreme local weather did not shape people's awareness of climate change as a political problem or their climate policy preferences in a sustained manner. Even among people who may be considered most likely to exhibit such effects, we did not detect them. Moreover, we demonstrate that the common modeling strategy of combining fixed-effects regression with clustered standard errors leads to severely reduced standard errors and substantively different results. We conclude that it cannot be taken for granted that personally experiencing extreme weather phenomena makes a difference in perceptions of climate change and related policy preferences.

AbstractDemocratic stability depends on citizens' willingness to support the application of liberal and democratic principles. Yet recent experimental research leaves doubt whether the high levels of abstract support for liberal democratic norms found in the literature translate to individuals defending these norms, even against their own interests. We argue that support for liberal and democratic principles involves trade-offs when people can determine the costs and benefits of these principles for their own political agendas. In consequence, their support for the application of these norms differs from their abstract support for the same principles. Using data from two surveys on German citizens' attitudes toward climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that trade-off specific cues affect people's expressions of support for liberal and democratic norms in line with their interests. Individuals who are more concerned about a crisis are less willing to support norms that impede the implementation of their preferred policies. As support for the application of liberal and democratic norms significantly diverges from expressed levels of abstract support, the informative value of the latter regarding the stability of liberal democratic regimes is called into question.

In times of rising partisan polarization and increasing disenchantment with political elites, everyday political talk could constitute an important venue for citizen deliberation. Everyday political discussions offer ordinary people opportunities to strengthen deliberative skills, form considered preferences ,and hone political identities in relation to others. However, informal political discussions seldom follow the norms of formal deliberative fora, calling into question how often such everyday talk really enables democratic deliberation in the broader public. The answer is essential to assess the deliberative potential of everyday political talk and thus to understand its role in the deliberative system. Focusing on the democratic and deliberative standards of reason-giving, mutual respect, equality, and inclusion, we develop a multi-step model of democratic deliberation in everyday political talk, in which the potential for democratic deliberation depends on the presence of all four core standards. As individuals' propensity for democratic deliberation is likely to vary with their level of political involvement, both in terms of how much they care about politics and how strongly they identify with political groups, we consider both dimensions when modeling democratic deliberation in individuals' everyday political discussions. We test all steps of the model with data from a large panel survey tracing the informal political discussion networks of 18,079 German voters during the year leading up to the national elections in 2017. Our findings indicate that everyday political talk is more deliberative than expected, as the three core standards of democratic deliberation we can measure are largely upheld in people's political exchanges.

In times of rising partisan polarization and increasing disenchantment with political elites, everyday political talk could constitute an important venue for citizen deliberation. Everyday political discussions offer ordinary people opportunities to strengthen deliberative skills, form considered preferences ,and hone political identities in relation to others. However, informal political discussions seldom follow the norms of formal deliberative fora, calling into question how often such everyday talk really enables democratic deliberation in the broader public. The answer is essential to assess the deliberative potential of everyday political talk and thus to understand its role in the deliberative system. Focusing on the democratic and deliberative standards of reason-giving, mutual respect, equality, and inclusion, we develop a multi-step model of democratic deliberation in everyday political talk, in which the potential for democratic deliberation depends on the presence of all four core standards. As individuals' propensity for democratic deliberation is likely to vary with their level of political involvement, both in terms of how much they care about politics and how strongly they identify with political groups, we consider both dimensions when modeling democratic deliberation in individuals' everyday political discussions. We test all steps of the model with data from a large panel survey tracing the informal political discussion networks of 18,079 German voters during the year leading up to the national elections in 2017. Our findings indicate that everyday political talk is more deliberative than expected, as the three core standards of democratic deliberation we can measure are largely upheld in people's political exchanges.

Party attachments shape perceptions of the political context, but neither are they fixed nor do they completely blind supporters to political reality. When severe challenges like the European sovereign debt or refugee crises force parties to change their policies or make formerly inconsequential positions salient, party identifiers may find their policy preferences at odds with their party identification. This may lead them to adopt their party's position. However, if inconsistent positions are sufficiently important, party identifiers may also loosen their party ties. The chapter uses survey data from the GLES campaign panels 2009-2017 to show how these crises prompted identifiers to follow the party line in some cases but more often weakened or even eroded party attachments among supporters with strong issue positions. In effect, the Euro crisis and, in particular, the refugee crisis appears to have contributed to an issue-based reshuffling of the partisan balance in German politics.

Party attachments shape perceptions of the political context, but neither are they fixed nor do they completely blind supporters to the political reality. When severe societal challenges such as the European debt or refugee crises force parties to change their policies or make formerly inconsequential positions salient and thus relevant, party identifiers may find their policy preferences at odds with their party identification. This may lead party supporters to adopt their party's position. However, if the inconsistent position is sufficiently important, party identifiers may also loosen the ties to their party. We use individual-level data from the GLES campaign panels 2009-2017 to show how these crises have prompted identifiers to follow the party line in some cases, but have even more often weakened or even eroded party attachments among supporters who hold strong positions. In effect, the European debt crisis and particularly the European refugee crisis appear to have contributed to an issue-based reshuffling of the partisan balance in German politics.