Does Priming Democratic Vulnerability Make Citizens Punish Undemocratic Behavior?

Abstract Recent instances of public support for democracy-violating political leaders have sparked an important stream of research suggesting that such leaders may gain support by representing citizens’ political interests or by holding competence advantages. However, less attention has been given to how to counter such support. One possible route for pro-democratic forces to counter anti-democratic tendencies is telling people that democracy is vulnerable and at risk of breaking down. In this paper, I examine this straightforward intervention against support for undemocratic politicians. Specifically, I prime democratic vulnerability and assign undemocratic behavior to political candidates in two experimental studies from 2020 to 2021 including 10 countries in total. I find that vulnerability priming only in few cases increases the extent to which citizens sanction undemocratic behavior. The findings have important implications for our knowledge of how to counter democratic backsliding and show that pro-democratic forces may be better off resorting to other arguments.