Age Gaps Between Political Leaders and the Public Can Undermine Support for Democracy (With Alonso Roman Amarales and Luca Bellodi).
Many democracies elect political leaders who are older than the public. We find evidence that these age gaps can weaken confidence in representation and reduce support for democracy, though the effects appear relatively small. Observational and experimental analyses from original surveys in Italy, South Korea, and the United States indicate that people are less satisfied with democracy when they believe politicians are too old. Cross-national analysis from dozens of democracies shows that support for democracy is lower where older politicians are more predominant. However, in a conjoint experiment, we also find that age gaps weaken evaluations of representational quality less so than gaps for some other descriptive characteristics, especially gender. Results are similar across age cohorts, suggesting that age gaps constitute a general challenge to democratic support rather than fueling intergenerational conflict over democracy. These findings imply that democracies can modestly improve public satisfaction by increasing representation of younger generations.