Abstract
<p>The recent wave of democratic backsliding has demonstrated that liberal democracies are vulnerable to subversion by authoritarian leaders. Research showed that democratically elected leaders remove checks and balances that constrain their power. One of the explanations why leaders can violate democratic rules focuses on the response of citizens who trade off democracy for partisan and policy gains. This article investigates cross-country differences in vulnerabilities to democratic backsliding by comparing democratic priority profiles of citizens and the patterns of approval for transgressions of democratic rules. We use observational evidence from online surveys with large quota-based samples of citizens in a two-party presidential system (USA, N &gt; 1700), a multi-party parliamentary system based on proportional representation with some semi-presidential features (Poland, N &gt;1800), and a consociational parliamentary system based on proportional representation (Netherlands, N = &gt; 2100). To complement observational evidence, we test experimentally some of these aggregate-level differences: next to partisanship and policy gains, we also manipulate different democratic transgressions (protest rights and decree powers) and measure their effects on government approval in the three countries. Our results show that citizens of different countries have different democratic priority profiles and differ in their disapproval of specific transgressions. Although overall transgressions are not rewarded, and citizens are mostly vigilant and disapproving of violating democratic rules, we find both observational and experimental evidence indicating that liberal democracies can have different vulnerabilities that relate to the democratic attitudes of citizens.</p>