Publication in Governance, International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, April 2025
Across much of the world, democratically elected leaders have eroded democratic institutions while retaining broad popular support. This pattern, often termed democratic backsliding, poses a fundamental puzzle: why do citizens who profess to value democracy tolerate, or even welcome, attacks on the very institutions designed to protect it?
In his paper, “Checks and Balances and Institutional Gridlock: Implications for Authoritarianism,” Fatih Serkant Adıgüzel argues that aspiring autocrats exploit a tension inherent in democratic systems: the possibility of institutional gridlock versus the abuse of power.
Adiguzel, F.S. (2025), Checks and Balances and Institutional Gridlock: Implications for Authoritarianism. Governance, 38: e70017. https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.70017
Checks and balances framed as obstacles
Checks and balances exist precisely to prevent rulers from abusing their authority. However, these same institutions can slow policy delivery, creating a “gridlock prevention” opening that authoritarian politicians are well-positioned to exploit. The paper’s central argument is that when aspiring autocrats present checks and balances as obstacles to responsive governance, citizens become significantly more willing to accept their dismantlement. By emphasizing that an unconstrained executive can more efficiently translate popular preferences into actual policies, these leaders increase the salience of gridlock concerns relative to concerns about abuse of power. The result is that citizens who are not necessarily anti-democratic nonetheless lend support to authoritarian institutional changes.
Crucially, the paper demonstrates that this framing does more than persuade citizens to tolerate the removal of institutions. It changes how citizens perceive the very act of dismantling those institutions.
Most people have a majoritarian understanding of democracy
A further concern raised by the paper is the conceptual gap between liberal and majoritarian understandings of democracy. Most people conceive of democracy in majoritarian terms: a good democracy is one that efficiently delivers on popular preferences. This means that an aspiring autocrat who dismantles judicial independence under the banner of removing obstacles to the “will of the people” is not simply deceiving voters. For many citizens, the framing is genuinely consistent with their understanding of what democracy requires.
VALPOP highlights the cognitive and rhetorical mechanisms
This paper is directly relevant to VALPOP’s focus on how political actors shape the governance of public goods and the conditions under which democratic accountability erodes. VALPOP aims to understand the network dynamics through which populist narratives gain traction and undermine the institutional infrastructure on which equitable access to public goods depends. Its findings illuminate one specific mechanism through which this erosion proceeds: the strategic reframing of accountability institutions as barriers rather than safeguards.
This connects to VALPOP’s broader concern about the conditions under which citizens disengage from the institutional frameworks that protect public value. Understanding the cognitive and rhetorical mechanisms that make democratic backsliding appear legitimate to ordinary citizens is a precondition for developing meaningful counter-strategies. This question lies at the heart of VALPOP’s research agenda.
