Democratic oversight breaks down when voters can no longer tell genuine abuses of power from partisan attacks. Strategic trolling exploits that uncertainty and makes legitimate warnings easier to dismiss.

Democracy is most vulnerable when voters can no longer distinguish genuine abuses of power from partisan attacks. Authoritarian leaders exploit that uncertainty by blurring the line between misconduct and political theatre, making legitimate criticism look like just another witch hunt.

US Vice President JD Vance recently mused that if Watergate happened today, it would be a 12-hour news story. Was he boasting that President Donald Trump’s administration can survive scandals that would once have brought down a presidency, or was this a jab at a media establishment that is too weak to make any allegation stick? Either way, Vance inadvertently identified one of democracy’s deepest vulnerabilities: when every accusation can be dismissed as a partisan witch hunt, and when every unstatesmanlike comment is explained away as “just trolling”, democratic oversight begins to break down.

In new research, we build on a generation of scholarship on democratic backsliding to show that democracy’s last line of defence is not the opposition, but the incumbent’s own supporters. It is they who must ultimately defend democracy, since everyone else already opposes the person in power.

Hungary’s recent election is a case in point. Former prime minister Viktor Orbán lost not simply because his opponents turned........

© Pearls and Irritations