When to Polarize and When to Talk Trash: Backsliding Leaders and Public Opinion

• In Event: Evaluating Public Support for Democracy

Abstract

Presidents and prime ministers who want to erode their democracies benefit from
operating in polarized polities, where their supporters worry more about the nefarious
opposition coming to power than in protecting democratic norms and institutions.
Backsliders therefore have an interest in making the polity ever more polarized. But
there is a downside to this strategy: just as it mobilizes their own supporters, it also
mobilizes the supporters of the other party. A second strategy that avoids this
disadvantage is to trash talk or discredit democratic institutions. If the courts or
electoral administration bodies are already corrupt and ineffective, the leader should be
allowed to reduce their power and independence.
In what contexts will backsliders send polarizing messages to voters, and in which will
they denigrate democratic institutions? I expect polarizing strategies when leaders face
electoral risk, and democracy-degrading ones when they face less risk and are
undertaking efforts to weaken independent institutions. I use text-as-data techniques to
test these propositions with the rhetoric of democracy-eroding leaders in Venezuela,
Mexico, and the United States.

Author

• Susan C. Stokes, University of Chicago