DEMO-LIES
Deception in Democracy: Political Lying Accusations and Their Effects on Democratic Citizenship
European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant · 2025–2030 · Principal Investigator: Maurits J. Meijers · University of Antwerp · CORDIS · Project Description (PDF)
In today's age of 'misinformation', politicians are frequently accused of bending the truth to their advantage. As citizens rely on accurate and accessible information to meaningfully engage with politics, political lying violates the contract between citizens and their elected representatives. Political lying accusations therefore have the potential to erode citizens' trust in and commitment to representative democracy as a system of governance.
DEMO-LIES examines the prevalence, nature, and determinants of politicians' lying accusations and studies how political lying accusations are perceived by citizens and what their consequences are for citizens' democratic attitudes and behaviour. The project introduces a novel research agenda within the realm of political representation, studying political lying allegations from a relational perspective — taking into consideration both the accused (the target) and the accuser (the source) of lying allegations.
The project focuses on 20 European democracies (plus the United States for comparative purposes) and relies on an integrated multi-method approach including automated text analysis, qualitative interviews, observational and experimental surveys, and longitudinal survey evidence.
Four Research Aims
Has the prevalence and nature of political lying accusations changed over time?
Using large-scale automated text analysis and NLP, DEMO-LIES collects unique longitudinal data on political lying accusations in 20 national parliaments. This enables mapping of temporal and thematic trends. The resulting database will be made available to the academic community.
Which actors are involved, under which conditions are accusations made, and whose accusations are accurate?
Integrating WP1 data with party- and context-level characteristics, DEMO-LIES conducts in-depth multilevel analyses of the actor-level, context-level, and accusation-level drivers of political lying accusations in parliamentary debates — and examines which accusations accurately expose deception versus serving as political rhetoric.
How do citizens respond to accusations of political lying?
With qualitative interviews, observational surveys, and pre-registered survey experiments, DEMO-LIES studies under which conditions citizens accept or reject political lying allegations. The project examines how partisan identity, affective polarisation, and the (in)accurate nature of the accusation shape citizen perceptions.
How does exposure to lying accusations affect individuals' democratic citizenship?
Triangulating qualitative interviews, survey experiments, and longitudinal survey data, DEMO-LIES investigates the consequences of political lying accusations for citizens' satisfaction with democracy, regime support for representative democracy, and active political participation.
Methods
Automated Text Analysis (NLP)
Large-scale multilingual NLP including manual annotation, supervised machine learning, named-entity recognition, relation extraction, topic modelling, and semantic clustering across parliamentary corpora of 20 countries.
Multilevel Regression Analysis
Party-year level and dyadic multilevel models examining actor-level, context-level, and accusation-level determinants of political lying accusations, including party characteristics, institutional features, and polarisation.
Qualitative Interviews & Focus Groups
In-depth interviews and focus groups exploring citizens' evaluations of the functioning of democracy and their responses to lying accusations, conducted in six countries.
Cross-National Observational Surveys
New cross-national survey evidence on citizens' perceptions of political lying accusations — fielded in six democracies: Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States.
Pre-Registered Survey Experiments
Experimental designs (conjoint and vignette experiments) embedded in surveys to causally identify the effects of exposure to lying accusations on citizen perceptions and democratic attitudes.
Longitudinal Cross-National Survey Analysis
Time-series cross-sectional analysis combining WP1 data with longitudinal survey measures from CSES, ESS, and WVS on political trust, democratic support, and political participation across 20 countries.
Geographical Scope
Text Analysis & Longitudinal Surveys (WP1, WP2, WP4)
20 representative democracies: 19 European countries plus the United States.
New Surveys & Experiments (WP3, WP4)
Six democracies: Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States — ensuring diversity in electoral systems, party systems, and democratic experience.
Project Team
Prof. Dr. Maurits J. Meijers
Research Professor of Political Science, University of Antwerp
Research interests: political lying and deception, populism and democratic erosion, party politics, European integration, public opinion and voting behaviour.
Dr. Tom Bellens
University of Antwerp · 2025–2028
Large-scale quantitative text analysis of lying accusations in parliamentary speech. Focus on computational social science and NLP methods.
Marthe Verdegem
University of Antwerp · 2025–2029
Doctoral research within the DEMO-LIES project. Second supervisor: Prof. Petra Meier.
Simon McManus
University of Antwerp · 2026–2030
Doctoral research within the DEMO-LIES project. Second supervisor: Prof. Petra Meier.
Outputs
The project aims to produce 10 peer-reviewed academic articles in high-ranked journals,
along with a publicly available database of political lying accusations across 20 countries.
Publications from DEMO-LIES are tagged demo-lies in the publications list.
Funding
European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant
Grant amount: €1,500,000 · Period: 2025–2030 · Grant ID: 101164535
Hosted at the University of Antwerp