Embedded Democracies: How Multilevel Context Shapes Citizens' Democratic Vigilance

A growing body of literature examines when and why citizens are willing to defend democracy against aspiring autocrats or, alternatively, collude with them in eroding democracy. Existing research identifies several mechanisms underlying public support for democratic backsliding, including limited awareness of leaders’ authoritarian intentions, partisan rationalization of undemocratic practices, and trade-offs between democratic principles and desired policy outcomes. This paper adds a multilevel perspective by asking how external cues and interventions shape citizens’ democratic vigilance within European Union (EU) member states, particularly their willingness to punish democratic erosion at home and abroad. In political systems embedded in multilevel governance structures such as the EU, citizens’ democratic attitudes are shaped not only by domestic considerations but also by external information, framing, and material consequences. External actors may affect democratic vigilance by providing information about backsliding processes, by reframing democratic erosion as legitimate or illegitimate, and by imposing material costs through enforcement mechanisms. Empirically, we employ a vignette survey experiment that varies (1) whether democratic erosion occurs in respondents’ own country or another EU member state, (2) the government’s justification for the erosion, and (3) the framing of the EU response, involving symbolic condemnation or material sanctions. The experiment is fielded in six EU member states—Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands—allowing us to assess how national democratic trajectories condition responsiveness to EU-level democratic cues.