“When they go low, we kick them”: Introducing and testing the Reciprocal Democratic Transgressions Model

While most people across the globe express their support for democracy as the preferable form of governance, recent studies reveal that a significant proportion of the citizenry is willing to trade their cherished democratic principles for desired political gains. This raises the question: What motivates citizens to sacrifice the democratic principles they profess to hold dear? In this paper, we propose a new and innovative model that can partially explain this puzzle: The Reciprocal Democratic Transgression Model. Drawing from psychological theories about negative reciprocity, we argue that in response to a democratic transgression by the political opponent, citizens become more likely to support reciprocal democratic violations and hence condone attempts of democratic erosion by their own political camp. Moreover, we argue that vertical affective polarization amplifies these tendencies to reciprocate democratic violations. We rely on experimental data (N= 3810) to test the reciprocal transgression model and the potentially amplifying effects of vertical affective polarization amongst citizens in the UK. Our results show strong evidence of reciprocation: citizens exposed to transgressions by the political opponent are about twice as likely to support democratic violations by the preferred party. Vertical affective polarization, however, does not appear to enhance these tendencies. This study has alarming implications for democracy as the findings suggest that undemocratic elite behaviours can initiate a cyclical pattern of democratic erosion driven by reciprocal undemocratic actions. Yet, when levels of vertical affective polarization are high, the willingness of winners to exercise restraint may become less obvious. Moreover, we know little about their behaviour in their pursuit of victory before the election takes place. Scholars have argued that affective polarization can drive citizens to prioritize their preferred party over democracy (Graham & Svolik 2020), and as a result pursue electoral victories at all costs. Indeed, Levitsky and Ziblatt (2019) state that when people start to perceive the political opponent as an existential threat, they "may decide to employ any means necessary to defeat them – and therein lies a justification for authoritarian measures". Though various scholars have argued that affective polarization can drive citizens to abandon restraint, empirical evidence is scarce. As such, in this study, we empirically test to what extent vertical affective polarization drives citizens to condone unfair electoral processes in their pursuit of victory. We conduct a survey-experiment leading up to the 2024 US presidential elections, in which we manipulate respondent’s level of vertical affective polarization. Subsequently, we empirically test whether vertical affective polarization has a causal effect on citizens’ support for undemocratic electoral measures that increase the likelihood of an in-party win. In addition to creating an original manipulation of vertical affective polarization, this study will provide insights into whether polarized citizens are willing to prioritize fair democratic processes above their partisan electoral interests.