Building Tolerance for Backsliding by Trash-Talking Democracy: Theory and Evidence From Mexico

Leaders who seek to build public toleration for democratic backsliding have a little-noticed strategy at their disposal: degrading their democracies in the eyes of their citizens. If voters can be induced to believe that their democracy is already broken, then nothing of value is lost when leaders attack the courts, vilify the press, or undermine confidence in elections. We call this strategy trash-talking democracy , and study it in the context of contemporary Mexico. We use text-as-data methods to show that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador spent more time trash-talking his democracy than he did deepening partisan polarization. With a survey experiment we show that exposure to López Obrador’s trash-talking of the courts elicits anti-democratic attitudes among Mexicans — both among his supporters and among supporters of the opposition. Strategies to resist backsliding should include not just efforts at de-polarization but also at restoring confidence in democratic institutions.