Seminars

Can citizens defend democracy while accepting violations of democratic norms when those violations benefit their own party or target opponents they regard as a danger to the regime? This presentation examines how partisanship and political tolerance shape support for two kinds of norm violation in a context of democratic backsliding: executive aggrandizement, which weakens checks and balances, and restrictions on the rights of association and protest, which withdraw political rights from an opposing group. We argue that democratic commitment becomes conditional rather than principled when party cues identify who benefits from a violation and who is targeted by it. Supporters of the anti-democratic party, whose leadership is associated with backsliding, should be more willing to tolerate executive aggrandizement that empowers their own side; supporters of the principled democratic party, its main opponent, may in turn treat restrictions on their opponents' rights as democratic self-defense. The analysis draws on an online survey experiment with 2,586 respondents in Brazil, randomly assigned to six vignette conditions that vary the type of violation and the partisan cue attached to it. The results support the expectations of partisan asymmetry and party-cue convergence: supporters of the anti-democratic party are more likely to accept a co-partisan violation of checks and balances, and the partisan gap narrows when the violation targets political opponents. Outgroup intolerance is not confirmed: agreement with restricting peaceful association and protest does not rise reliably even when an explicit party cue identifies the opposing camp as the target. Democratic commitment is conditional, but the democratic-defense paradox has a floor: partisan hostility alone does not license the suspension of civil liberties.

Brazilians’ experiences of democratic transition reveal a persistent tension between political change and institutional continuity. This paper draws on debates about the Lei de Anistia (1979 Amnesty Law), reparations for victims of the dictatorship, and disputes over memories of and responsibility for earlier human rights violations in order to examine how an incomplete sense of justice contributes to the preservation of practices, institutions, and authoritarian forms of political culture within Brazilian democracy. The analysis connects this legacy to more recent democratic crises, especially the militarization of politics, attempts at institutional rupture, and new far right movements. It thus discusses a broader question: In what ways do democracies that fail to adequately confront their pasts remain vulnerable to a repetition of those pasts? The Brazilian example therefore permits us to think of redemptive transitions to social justice and democratic openness not simply as phenomena directed at resolving political issues inherited from the past, but as a permanent part of the construction, protection, and resilience of democratic politics.