Democratic Attitudes, Normative Tensions and Ideological Change

I am interested in the tensions between various normative values associated with democratic politic, how these tensions relate to citizens’ and elites’ ideas about democracy, as well as how they impact policies in democratic societies. I am currently working with Robert Klemmensen and Erik Wengström on a project titled “The Rich and the Social Contract”, which uses survey and register data to examine the views of Sweden’s top 1% of income earners on redistribution, inequality, meritocracy, and democracy.

Some of my research on this topic has also looked at how liberal democracies enact policies of immigrant selection that produce patterns of discrimination against their own citizens. Other work looks at how democratic participation became tied to nationality and the discursive strategies that actors are using to challenge nationality as a legitimate criterion for political exclusion. I have also published essays on the quality of democracy in Latin America.

Finally, I am currently working on several papers on the changing meanings of democracy over time, as well as on the long-term legacies of political repression during World War II on contemporary support for far-right parties in France.

Publications:

Gagnon, Jean-Paul et al. (2025). The Sciences of the Democracies, University College London Press and Chicago University Press.

Cameron, Maxwell and Agustín Goenaga. (2023) “Is Latin America Experiencing a Second Cycle of Leftist Politics? — ¿América Latina vive un segundo ciclo de política de izquierda?”, Política y Gobierno, 30(1).

Hansen, Michael and Agustín Goenaga. (2021). “Gender and Democratic Attitudes: Do Women and Men Prioritize Different Democratic Institutions?”, Politics & Gender, 17(1), pp. 23-52.

Ellermann, Antje and Agustín Goenaga. (2019). “Discrimination and Policies of Immigrant Selection in Liberal States”, Politics & Society, Vol. 47(1), 87-116.

Goenaga, Agustín. (2019). “Defending Popular Sovereignty: Discursive Conflict in French and Swedish Parliamentary Debates on Immigrant Voting Rights (1968-2017)’‘, Citizenship Studies, online first.

Goenaga, Agustín. (2016)  “Democracy in Latin America” In Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science. Ed. Sandy Maisel. New York: Oxford University Press.

Working papers