Stronger protections for minorities depress support for democracy.

Backlash across the world.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/in-the-mood-for-democracy-democratic-support-as-thermostatic-opinion/D92BFDDD1565D610C38A0AA88DDBA102/core-reader Christopher Claassen’s very depressing paper in APSR 2020

Whenever historically dominant groups fear losing their privileges, they react aggressively to preserve their entitlements.

That’s universal

I can only think of four exceptions in which backlash does *not* occur

1) if the dominant groups sees social change as beneficial: shared prosperity in thriving regions; men benefit from their wife’s employment

2) people’s beliefs shift with urbanisation/ working together

3) death & generational replacement

4) the minority is organised & resists

1) includes

Local economic geography : thriving regions like London not voting for brexit, see work by @rodriguez_pose;

and Latin America’s pink tide holding as long as middle class groups saw redistribution as win-win, while commodity prices were high in the 2000s

2) is that through mixing & mingling, working together in shared projects or large firms, people come to recognise shared interests

So attitudes are usually more liberal in cities

(Some of this is a compositional effect of educated liberals moving to cities)

3) In the vast majority of countries, the younger generation is more progressive.

So social change happens one death at a time

(but Ofc this is mediated by other things, like local economic geography).

4) dominant groups may wish to protect & preserve their entitlements but the extent to whether they can achieve this depends on whether the minority is effectively organised & can resist.

Many examples from gender, race, caste, nationality...

Yes, this is common when men expect to be breadwinners, when female employment jeopardises men’s normative role as household head & providers

But afaik, it weakens with prolonged & widespread exposure to women in the workforce

(I’m talking decades. Social change is slowwwww) https://twitter.com/sameerqaiyum/status/1324480275284447235