Populist Rhetoric and Support for Unconstrained Incumbents in Ecuador

• In Event: Citizen Support for Democracy

Abstract

Why do citizens support measures that undermine checks and balances? While, in theory, voters should favor checks and balances that constrain incumbents between elections (Ferejohn 1986; Barro 1973), current research shows that partisan interests and issue considerations encourage support for measures that undermine checks and balances (Albertus and Grossman 2021; Singer 2018; Graham and Svolik 2020). And public support for measures that undermine checks on incumbent power has facilitated democratic backsliding in countries including Venezuela, Turkey, and Ecuador (Haggard and Kaufman 2021; Levitsky and Zibblat 2018).

I argue that incumbents’ use of populist rhetoric plays a key role in creating public support for measures that undermine checks and balances. Current explanations of citizen support for such measures focus on voters’ material interests and partisan identities (Albertus and Grossman 2021; Singer 2018; Graham and Svolik 2020). The role of political leaders in structuring these identities and channeling them into specific institutional preferences, however, is given less consideration. I argue that populist rhetoric creates support for measures that undermine checks and balances by framing the incumbent as the true representative of the people and by presenting institutions of horizontal accountability as captured by corrupt elites. If this is correct, individuals should be more willing to support measures that undermine checks and balances when they are exposed to populist rhetoric by sympathetic leaders.

I test this theory with a survey experiment (N = 3,270) conducted among a representative sample from Ecuador’s largest cities, Quito and Guayaquil. The experiment presents respondents with an incumbent governor who plans to close the municipal legislature, and the treatment varies the presence of populist rhetoric and the governor’s party affiliation. After reading the vignette, respondents are asked whether the governor is justified in closing the legislature and if they would support his decision to do so. The results indicate that populist rhetoric significantly increases support for closing the legislature. Moreover, the effect of populist rhetoric is greatest among individuals who identify with the governor’s party. This suggests that incumbents’ rhetoric shapes whether or not partisanship translates into support for measures that undermine checks and balances.

Works Cited

Albertus, M., & Grossman, G. 2021. The Americas: When Do Voters Support Power Grabs? Journal of Democracy, 32(2), 116-131.

Barro, Robert J. 1973. The Control of Politicians: An Economic Model." Public Choice. 19-42.

Ferejohn, John. 1986. Incumbent Performance and Electoral Control." Public Choice 50(1), 5-25

Graham, Matthew H and Milan W Svolik. 2020. Democracy in America? Partisanship, polarization, and the robustness of support for democracy in the United States." American Political Science Review 114(2), 392-409

Haggard, S. and Kaufman, R., 2021. Backsliding: Democratic Regress in the Contemporary World. Cambridge University Press.

Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. Broadway Books, 2018.

Singer, Matthew. 2018. Delegating Away Democracy: How good representation and policy successes
can undermine democratic legitimacy." Comparative Political Studies 51(13), 1754-1788.

Author

• Brett Bessen, Tecnológico de Monterrey