In recent years, scholars and citizens alike have been puzzled by a political paradox: while large majorities of Indians express strong support for democracy, many also endorse the idea of a “strong leader” who can make decisions without the constraints of democratic institutions. How can these seemingly contradictory attitudes coexist? Is India, the world’s largest democracy, experiencing a quiet transformation in how its citizens think about democracy and authority?
Our recent study explores these questions through four datasets collected between 2020 and 2024, covering both national and subnational contexts. These include the 2020 Bihar and 2022 Uttar Pradesh state elections, the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, and the World Values Survey. Together, these data provide one of the most comprehensive looks yet at how institutional trust and media consumption shape public attitudes toward democracy and autocracy in India.
The uneven landscape of democratic attitudes
One of the key takeaways from our research is that support for democracy remains robust in India, but it varies significantly across regions and over time. Nationally, as reflected in the World Values Survey (2023), citizens overwhelmingly endorse democracy as the best form of government. Yet, subnational variations tell a more complex story. For instance, our study found that in Bihar in 2020, democratic support was noticeably weaker compared with Uttar Pradesh in 2022 and the national sample. These variations suggest that democratic support in India cannot be viewed as a uniform national sentiment. Instead, it reflects context-specific experiences of governance, regional political cultures, and electoral dynamics. Where governance failures and institutional weaknesses are more visible, citizens may grow disillusioned — not necessarily with democracy itself, but with how it functions in practice.
At the same time, support for authoritarian leadership coexists with democratic commitment. This ambivalence is most pronounced in the 2024 Lok Sabha pre-poll online survey, which shows relatively higher endorsement of strong, centralised leadership compared with the subnational trends. This pattern partly reflects the demographic composition of the online sample, which included more urban, educated, and globally exposed citizens, who may value efficiency and policy continuity over participatory decision-making.
In emerging economies, where economic growth and stability are top priorities, such preferences are often framed as “instrumental democracy” — supporting democratic ideals but favouring decisive leadership when democratic processes appear slow or fragmented.
Institutional Trust: The double-edged sword of democracy
A second key finding concerns the complex role of institutional trust. Conventional wisdom suggests that trust in institutions such as the government, courts and military reinforces democratic stability. Yet our results show a more complicated picture. Across all contexts, trust in government and the military is positively associated with democratic support, suggesting that citizens who perceive state institutions as legitimate are also more likely to endorse democratic principles.
However, trust in courts displays a more ambivalent pattern. In some settings, it reinforces democratic support; in others, it correlates with openness to authoritarian leadership.
This counterintuitive finding reveals an important nuance: citizens’ trust in institutions does not automatically translate into support for democracy. Where courts are perceived as complicit in centralising power or enabling executive overreach, trust in them may instead signal support for a more controlled and less pluralistic political order. Judicial trust, therefore, may not always function as a bulwark against authoritarian sympathies.
In this sense, India’s experience mirrors what political scientist Nancy Bermeo calls “democratic backsliding” — not the sudden collapse of democracy, but the gradual repurposing of institutions to legitimise the concentration of power. Citizens may continue to trust the judiciary or government, even as these institutions become instruments of executive dominance.
Thus, trust itself becomes a double-edged sword: it can be a stabiliser of democracy, or a legitimiser of its erosion.
Media matters
The study also finds that media ecosystems significantly shape attitudes toward democracy and authoritarianism, but in highly context-dependent ways. Across surveys, we distinguish between social media platforms — Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram — and traditional media such as newspapers and television.
Interestingly, social media use is not uniformly detrimental to democratic support, as is often assumed. In some contexts, such as the 2024 Lok Sabha survey, WhatsApp use correlates with higher democratic engagement, possibly because of its role in facilitating political discussion and mobilisation within closed groups.
However, the relationship is not straightforward. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election survey, social media use was also linked with declining trust in institutions and greater receptiveness to authoritarian narratives. This is not surprising given growing evidence that social media can be polarising and can be manipulated by political elites.
Traditional media, too, show mixed patterns. Newspapers and television, while traditionally seen as promoters of informed citizenship, sometimes reinforce both democratic and authoritarian sympathies depending on the political climate and ownership structure.
As media conglomerates increasingly align with political power, the boundary between independent journalism and political messaging becomes blurred. The key takeaway is that the medium alone does not determine democratic attitudes; what matters is the informational content, credibility, and diversity of perspectives within each medium.
The challenge of hybrid political preferences
Taken together, these findings reveal an underlying transformation in India’s political culture: the rise of hybrid political preferences, where citizens simultaneously value democratic ideals and express comfort with strong, centralised leadership.
Rather than viewing this as mere inconsistency, it may be more accurate to see it as a negotiation between democratic aspirations and the desire for effective governance. For many Indians, democracy is an ideal worth preserving, but one they also expect to deliver efficiency, accountability and order. When democratic processes appear to fall short on these fronts, the appeal of a decisive leader grows stronger.
This ambivalence does not necessarily signal a rejection of democracy, but it does reflect a shift in what citizens expect from it. As India’s democracy matures, its citizens are redefining what effective governance means and, in doing so, reshaping the meaning of democracy itself.
These findings have profound implications not only for India but also for other large and diverse democracies such as Brazil, Indonesia and the United States. The coexistence of democratic ideals and authoritarian sympathies suggests that backsliding is not always a story of collapse; it can also be a story of coexistence, where democratic forms endure, but democratic norms weaken.
For policymakers and civil society, this underscores the need to strengthen institutional transparency and judicial independence while promoting media literacy and pluralism. Trust in institutions must be earned through accountability, not assumed through rhetoric.
Ultimately, safeguarding democracy in the 21st century requires recognising its evolving character and understanding what citizens expect from it, without compromising on the core principles of participation, equality and restraint of power.
Taberez Ahmed Neyazi is an Associate Professor and Principal Investigator at the
Centre for Trusted Internet & Community, and Director of Digital Campaigns and
Propaganda Lab, National University of Singapore.
(Edited by Maryam Hassan)