Papp, Zs. (2026). Inclusive representation and perceived democratic performance under democratic backsliding. Evidence from a full-factorial experiment in Hungary. Democratization, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2026.2697780
If you win an election, you get to govern. That is the fundamental majoritarian rule of democratic politics. But what happens when winning means completely silencing the losers? Does a democracy remain legitimate in the eyes of its citizens if a massive portion of the population is systematically shut out of the political process? Traditionally, political science has viewed this through a simple, ego-centric lens called the “winner–loser gap”, which suggests that if your preferred party wins, you are satisfied with democracy, and if they lose, you are not. However, this study based on a survey experiment conducted in Hungary challenges this binary perspective. The research reveals that our evaluations of democracy are not just about whether our own side won. Instead, they depend on a delicate, system-level balance where the representation of our political opponents plays a crucial role in how we judge the entire system.
Moving Beyond the Winner-Loser Binary
Electoral competition naturally produces winners and losers. However, for a representative system to maintain long-term stability, it requires what political scientists call “losers’ consent”. The losing side must believe that even if they lost this round, they still have a voice and their interests are not entirely excluded. When representation becomes highly asymmetrical—especially in deeply polarized or backsliding regimes—governments often conflate an electoral victory with an exclusive mandate to govern without opposition input. This raises a critical question of whether the systematic exclusion of political opponents simply becomes normalized over time.
To test this, the study shifted the focus from individual satisfaction to a multidimensional framework of representation. This approach evaluates the system based on two distinct but interacting dimensions: the perceived representation of government voters, which represents the majority mandate, and the perceived representation of opposition voters, which represents pluralist inclusion. By analyzing how these dimensions interact, the study set out to identify whether citizens impose a “cross-party penalty” by lowering their evaluation of democracy when their political rivals are excluded, even if their own side remains well-represented.
Hungary as the Ultimate Litmus Test
To test the endurance of these pluralist norms under severe institutional strain, the study focused on Hungary. Hungary serves as a classic case of democratic backsliding. Over the past decade and a half, the governing alliance has used successive legislative supermajorities to centralize power, tilt the electoral playing field, and systematically marginalize the opposition in media access and legislative influence. This has created a persistent, structural representational asymmetry in a highly polarized environment. If citizens prioritize partisan dominance over pluralist principles anywhere, it would be in such an environment. This makes Hungary a highly conservative test case for finding any genuine concern for the opposition’s representation.
The Experiment: How Citizens Value Both Sides
A survey experiment was conducted in which respondents were presented with various hypothetical political scenarios in a fictional country. These scenarios manipulated whether opposition voters felt represented, whether government voters felt represented, and the overall strength of the government’s electoral mandate. Participants then rated how well they believed democracy was functioning in that country.
The results revealed a dual-logic standard of democratic evaluation. First, the study found that the representation of opposition voters had the strongest overall effect on democratic evaluations. Respondents across the board evaluated democracy most favorably when both sides felt represented, and most negatively when neither felt included. This underscores that procedural fairness and pluralist inclusion remain vital benchmarks for democratic legitimacy. Second, the study found clear evidence for the cross-party penalty. Even in a highly polarized context, supporters of both sides penalized scenarios where the political out-group faced a representational deficit. Government supporters saw their democratic rating of a scenario increase significantly when the opposition was represented, and a similar positive shift emerged among opposition voters when government voters were portrayed as represented.
At the same time, partisan bias was highly apparent. Confirming the in-group interest hypothesis, both camps reacted most negatively when their own group suffered a representational deficit. For opposition voters, the absence of in-group representation caused a massive drop in evaluations, far outweighing the effect of government representation. This suggests that while citizens care about the out-group, they are still highly sensitive to their own group’s marginalization.
Who Cares Most About Pluralism?
Sub-group analysis revealed that while these pluralist benchmarks exist across the entire sample, they are not felt equally. The magnitude of these representational effects increases significantly among highly attentive citizens who are much more sensitive to representational deficits on either side. Similarly, highly educated individuals and those with stronger intrinsic democratic orientations hold the system to a much higher standard of procedural inclusiveness.
While these results are promising, the study notes several limitations. The online sample had an overrepresentation of highly educated individuals and a partisan skew toward opposition voters, which may slightly inflate the estimated importance of opposition representation. Additionally, we cannot entirely rule out social desirability bias, where respondents answer based on idealized democratic values rather than their practical political choices.
Why Democratic Resilience Remains Alive
Despite these limitations, the broader takeaway of this research is profoundly hopeful. In a political landscape where the opposition has been marginalized for years, one might expect government supporters to normalize autocratic majoritarianism and derive satisfaction from seeing their rivals silenced. Yet, the data suggests otherwise.
The persistent cross-party penalty demonstrates that even in backsliding and polarized regimes, the mental map of what a healthy democracy looks like remains remarkably stubborn. Deep down, citizens recognize that a system cannot be truly democratic if the ballot box fails to translate majoritarian wins into governance, or if the losing side is structurally erased from the conversation. Inclusive representation is not just a preference for the marginalized; it is a fundamental pillar of systemic legitimacy that even the winners require to feel secure in the system.