Trust Without Commitment: Public Support for the ECJ in Backsliding Democracies

To what extent do citizens in backsliding democracies trust international courts and view them as substitutes for failing national courts? While credible commitment theory predicts citizens in such cases turn to international courts, existing research largely dismisses such substitution. We revisit this question by disentangling trust in national versus international courts using original comparative survey data and discrete-choice experiments across eight EU member states. Our study systematically compares public attitudes toward the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and national high courts. We find that citizens in backsliding democracies — such as Hungary and Poland — express markedly higher trust in the ECJ than in their courts. Yet our experimental evidence reveals a striking paradox: respondents who trust the ECJ most are nonetheless willing to endorse reforms that curtail its independence in favor of empowering the elected European Parliament. This suggests that citizens in backsliding democracies do turn to international courts when domestic institutions fail, but out of expediency and not a commitment to judicial independence. Our findings illuminate the conditional nature of international judicial legitimacy under democratic erosion.