(iPoster) Elite Cues, Counter-Narratives, and Political Behavior in Colombia 2026

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries & Occupation, Memory, and National Identity
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Abstract

Scholars have long argued that strong public support for democracy protects against democratic erosion by constraining citizens’ tolerance for executive overreach (Claassen 2020). Yet a growing body of research shows that democratic support can coexist with, and even legitimate, illiberal practices when citizens prioritize instrumental outcomes over procedural constraints (Bermeo 2016; Svolik 2019). In Latin America, this tension is captured by the concept of illiberal majoritarianism, whereby citizens endorse unconstrained executive action so long as leaders are perceived to act in the name of the popular will (Córdova and de Freitas 2025).
This project advances this literature by theorizing migration-induced perceived resource constraints as a catalyst for such conditional democratic support. I argue that exposure to large-scale South–South migration can reshape citizens’ democratic preferences by heightening concerns about public services, security, and state capacity. Under these conditions, citizens may become more willing to endorse executive or extra-legal actions that promise to alleviate migration pressures, even when those actions undermine democratic norms. This does not mean that people abandon democratic values altogether. Instead, many appear to reorder those values, placing greater weight on effectiveness and problem-solving than on procedural limits and institutional checks.
I examine this argument in Colombia, the principal host of Venezuelan migrants worldwide, which has absorbed over 2.8 million migrants since 2015 (UNHCR 2025). Existing research shows that exposure to Venezuelan migration has shifted voting behavior toward the right, partly through economic threat perceptions and elite framing strategies (Rozo and Vargas 2021). I extend this work by asking whether migration exposure also reshapes how citizens evaluate democracy itself, increasing tolerance for illiberal executive action framed as migration-reducing or order-restoring.
Empirically, the study draws on a recent U.S. intervention in Venezuela—a real and widely discussed political event that sparked debate about executive power, constitutional limits, and its consequences for the region. I pre-register a national survey experiment in Colombia that uses this intervention as the basis for short news-style vignettes. The experiment varies two elements that featured prominently in public debate: whether the intervention is framed as aimed at restoring democracy and human rights or at reducing migration pressures, and whether it is described as constrained by multilateral rules or carried out unilaterally without authorization. Because respondents are reacting to an event that actually occurred, these framing choices allow me to examine how citizens weigh democratic principles when evaluating real policy actions, rather than hypothetical or distant scenarios.
Primary outcomes include (i) a Migration–Democracy Trade-Off Index, capturing willingness to subordinate democratic constraints to perceived problem-solving capacity, and (ii) a Domestic Democratic Violation Tolerance Scale, measuring endorsement of norm-bypassing practices such as circumventing legislative oversight during crises. The pre-analysis plan specifies tests of (a) framing effects, (b) interactions between migration-reduction motives and rule-violating cues, (c) heterogeneity by objective and perceived migration exposure, and (d) mediation through perceived resource strain. I further pre-register ideological moderation, anticipating stronger effects among right-leaning respondents, consistent with evidence that ideology conditions receptivity to threat-based frames (Holland, Peters, and Zhou 2024).
This study contributes to research on democratic backsliding by showing that democracy may become vulnerable not because citizens stop valuing it, but because they begin to prioritize its outcomes over its rules when migration is perceived as straining public resources and state capacity. By grounding the design in a real political intervention and pre-registering hypotheses and measurement, the project provides transparent evidence of when and why citizens are willing to tolerate illiberal executive action in migration-receiving democracies. More broadly, the study highlights how large-scale South–South migration can reshape democratic commitments in developing contexts, illustrating how pressures on governance and public services can lead citizens to see democracy less as a constraint on power and more as a tool for solving urgent problems.

Author

• Catalina Vega Mendez, University of Notre Dame