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Why the Well-informed Remain Intolerant ? Investigating ?Dangerous Minds? in Low- and Middle Income Countries

Political tolerance - the idea that citizens in a democratic society need to accept that even groups and individuals they dislike or object to have rights - is commonly regarded as an essential citizen virtue for a democratic state to be viable. However, due to the design of the methodologies that are commonly employed in tolerance studies, there is no distinction between those that base their intolerance on poor or false information - here referred to as ?uninformed intolerant? - and those who are ?informed intolerant? that maintain intolerant views despite having access to information that we normally see as supporting tolerant norms. This research project will focus on the informed intolerant individuals, since their impact on the viability of a relatively new or fragile democracy can be significant, while on the other hand the origin of their beliefs, values, and attitudes has been far too little explored. Hence the research question: how can ?informed intolerance? among individuals in low- and middle income countries be understood or explained? In order to investigate this question it is necessary to combine the genre of political tolerance studies with institutionalism and political psychology, where at least related questions have been explored. The study will employ in-depth interviews and small-scale surveys in India, Pakistan and Uganda to also test explanations that derive from a tolerance matrix which has been constructed for the project.

Project ID

SE-0-29-2013-6422_2-285-43082

Activity status

2 - Implementation

Aid type

D02 - Other technical assistance

% to Uganda

100.00

Organisations

Funding

Sweden

Implementing

Uppsala universitet

Extending

None

CRS code	%
Research/scientific institutions (43082)	100.0