Subverting Democracy in the Name of Democracy

Attempts to subvert democracy are often justified, paradoxically, as an effort to save orimprove democracy. Yet, little is known about the effectiveness of these justifications. Here,we conduct two original vignette experiments, where US American and Polish respondentsare introduced to a proposal of executive aggrandizement, usurping control over electionresults and capturing the media, respectively. We manipulate the proposal’s party andthe justification they provide in a 2 × 3 between subjects experiment (total N = 5,008).Our experiments replicate well-known effects of partisan bias in support for the subversionof democracy: respondents in both the US and Poland are more tolerant of subversionwhen it is initiated by their in-party. However, respondents are surprisingly resistant tojustifications, especially in the high external validity design implemented in the US. Evenin Poland where we “forced” respondents to pay attention to the justifications, support forsubversion is increased only among in-partisans and not by much. These results raise doubtthat democratic subversion can be effectively masked as a pro-democracy intervention bypro-democratic rhetoric.