This dissertation makes several contributions to the study of the relation between tolerance and democracy. The literature review indicates that tolerance has a great deal of importance to democracy.
15The risk that the assignment itself is correlated with some of the subjects’ characteristics (i.e., that the students enrolled in
Work and Travel differ in some important respects from students who were not enrolled in the program) is mitigated by the use of control variables in the analyses – though, obviously, the fact that the assignment was not done by the researcher is still
potentially problematic. By selecting students from the same university center who have been exposed to the same education-‐
al process, while verifying for the impact of the background variables, ensures that the data set can produce reliable and accu-‐ rate results.
It also suggests that the existence of extremist parties jeopardizes the actual fabric of the democratic process, but there is no discussion in the extant literature regarding the link between the three ele-‐ ments. This dissertation does just that, it links political and social tolerance to party choice, showing that less tolerant citizens support extremist parties and this support, in turn, endangers democracy. This link has not been previously researched. Additionally, as the literature review will indicate tolerance is multidimensional. There are no studies looking at the impact of social or political tolerance on democ-‐ racy and assessing if they have similar or diverse effects. It is proven in this dissertation that they have a different impact on voting behavior hence the study of tolerance and its effects should take into account this multidimensionality.
This study also looks at the link between the three elements in a longitudinal perspective; it evaluates the evolution of the relationship between tolerance, party choice and democracy. It seeks to understand in detail the impact of tolerance on democracy by analyzing specific cases such as France, Austria, Hungary and Romania. This analysis also offers a cross-‐sectional perspective by looking at western settled democracies such as France and Austria and emerging democracies such as Hungary and Romania. It is important to evaluate the impact of these concepts from a longitudinal perspective and see how in time tolerance has influenced voting behavior and democracy in time. The longitudinal per-‐ spective is a novel approach and despite lack of perfect data it shows that the institutional approach as well as the attempt of the mainstream right parties to capture votes from radical or extremist parties might fail and intolerant voters will continue to support their ideological choices.
Conversely, it also underlines the importance of finding ways to increase the level of tolerance among citizens in order to shore the democratic process. This study does just that by employing the results of an original study of Romanian students who traveled to the US for a determined amount of time. This original survey looks at the impact of socialization of attitudes and seeks to find if there is an
impact of temporary work migration on tolerance. It offers an assessment of the transformative effect of temporary migration on tolerance.
Romania is a relevant case study because it has less tolerant citizens as demonstrated previously (Viman-‐Miller and Fesnic 2010) and because in today’s Romanian politics the international community observes democratic setbacks. These democratic devolutions are observed at elite level, which is an expected phenomenon given the less tolerant society. If even the center-‐left coalition derails off the democratic path, it means that nobody is safe. Romania as a case study offers the possibility of answer-‐ ing some of the questions.
This study is important because it can offer policy prescriptions. For instance, if there is indeed a transformative effect of migration on tolerance, this could mean that open borders at least for the more educated populations of the younger democracies could benefit these countries not only the indi-‐ viduals. If this exposure proves to be beneficial there could be practical implications of these findings such as a renewed trust in the Work and Travel programs and an increase in the number of visas allotted to younger democracies. The newer democracies could consolidate the democratization process by so-‐ cializing their young educated generations among citizens of older more established democracies.
2 Critical Evaluation of the Extant Literature:
Micro and Macro Determinants of Tolerance, Partisanship, and Democracy
This chapter provides a review of the literature on tolerance and democracy. It begins by presenting the evolution, throughout the second half of the last century and up until today, of the discussion of the concept “tolerance,” starting with Stouffer’s (1955) classic operationalization, moving on to other schol-‐ ars’ subsequent clarifications and refinements. More specifically, it will evaluate the previous literature and what was established beforehand in regards to the impact of tolerance on democracy. It seeks to underline the connection between tolerance and democracy, and how this is mediated by the party sys-‐ tem format and the level of support for the radical right. The second part will critically evaluate the de-‐ terminants of tolerance in comparative analyses, with a focus on the impact of migration. The chapter goes well beyond a mere presentation of previous research; it is also a derivation of the research ques-‐ tion through critical evaluation of what we know, what we do not know, and what remains contested by scholars who study tolerance, partisanship, democracy and migration, and how these variables affect one another.
Scholarly literature fails to connect migration with social and political tolerance, and there are remarkably few studies that compare new democracies to older democracies’ levels of tolerance. There is also room in adding to the studies that seek answers to these questions in a longitudinal perspective and studies that analyze the impact of democracy on the levels of tolerance and of tolerance on democ-‐ racy. There are few studies that employ both a micro and a macro analysis level, comparing countries and individual-‐level variables. Filling this apparent gap in the literature allows researchers to observe if
the individual-‐level findings translate at macro-‐level. At individual-‐level as intolerance levels increase so does the support for radical or extremist parties and the same direction should be reflected at macro-‐ level with countries that have a well developed radical right supported by higher levels of intolerant population.