‘Parliamentary Elites and Democratic Backsliding: Generational and Political Experience-Based Patterns in Southern Europe’.

Research on democratic backsliding has primarily focused on institutional reforms and citizen attitudes, while comparatively less attention has been paid to the political supply side, namely the democratic orientations of political elites. This paper addresses this gap by examining how parliamentary candidates in four Southern European democracies -Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece- understand and evaluate core democratic principles. Drawing on data from the Comparative Candidates Survey (CCS) between 2005 and 2024, the study analyses elite attitudes toward procedural democracy and democratic responsiveness. The paper investigates whether variation in elite democratic commitments is structured by political experience and age. We expect (a) candidates with longer political experience to display stronger attachment to pluralistic representation and democratic accountability, reflecting socialisation into democratic norms; and (b) younger and more recently political actors to display greater openness to illiberal or majoritarian solutions, driven by perceptions of political inefficacy, polarization, and crisis politics. Empirically, the analysis focuses on elite evaluations of democratic performance and conceptions of the representative mandate. By tracing these attitudes across two decades marked by economic crisis and political fragmentation, the paper conceptualizes democratic backsliding as a gradual reorientation of elite normative beliefs rather than solely as an outcome of institutional change. The findings provide comparative evidence on whether Southern European parliamentary elites function as stabilizing guardians of democratic norms or as potential facilitators of democratic erosion from within.