Checks and Balances and Institutional Gridlock: Implications for Authoritarianism
研究揭示，有抱负的独裁者通过将制衡制度描绘为施政障碍，利用民主制度中僵局与权力滥用的内在矛盾，获得更多民众支持，并让民众误以为拆除制衡是促进民主的举措。
ABSTRACT Recently, the world saw a wave of elected leaders attack democracy. Why do people support leaders who remove checks and balances? I argue that aspiring autocrats gain more popular support when they present these institutions as obstacles to getting things done. In doing so, they exploit a critical tension between the possibility of gridlock and the abuse of power, which is inherent in democratic institutions. Using cross‐national data and leveraging an original survey experiment from Turkey, I show that effective checks and balances decrease democracy satisfaction and that aspiring autocrats gain more popular support when they present these institutions as obstacles. More interestingly, respondents perceive the aspiring autocrats' gridlock justification to dismantle checks and balances as a pro‐democratic attempt to remove the obstacles to a policy‐responsive regime. These results show that aspiring autocrats exploit the tension in democracies, making it harder for citizens to perceive the threat they face.