Natasha Wunsch and Theresa Gessler – Who tolerates democratic backsliding? A mosaic approach to voters’ responses to authoritarian leadership in Hungary

Abstract

In contexts of democratic backsliding, citizens represent the last bulwark against the systematic dismantling of checks and balances by overbearing executives. And yet, they repeatedly fail to punish authoritarian-leaning leaders at the ballot box, allowing them to consolidate their grip on power. Why is that so? We leverage a conjoint survey experiment in Hungary to probe competing mechanisms of citizen tolerance towards democratic violations in a context of severe backsliding. Our main contribution consists of demonstrating empirically the presence of a composite effect, whereby authoritarian-leaning elites succeed in offering targeted compensations to different groups, ultimately building a mosaic of support among voters to secure enduring electoral backing. We pinpoint trade-offs notably related to cultural conservatism and economic benefits among different subgroups of the population. At the same time, our empirical findings indicate surprisingly high levels of condemnation of undemocratic positions by Hungarian respondents. We discuss how this unexpected pattern points to the limitations of conjoint designs as well as the overlooked supply side of democratic backsliding. Our study feeds into broader debates about the unfolding and entrenchment of democratic backsliding and how we study these processes.