Why do electorates often fail to hold transgressing electoral officials accountable? Two leading explanations point to either a lack of democratic commitment or to the partisan costs of acting on such commitments, but rarely separate these mechanisms. Bermond Scoggins and Marc Jacob develop a theoretical framework that distinguishes between normative preferences for democracy and the political costs of partisan defection. Conducting a meta-analysis of candidate choice experiments across twelve countries and over 30,000 respondents, they identify the distinct effects of democratic commitment and partisan costs in both intra- and inter-party contests. They find that democratic commitment is widespread and stable across contexts, but that the partisan costs of sanctioning undemocratic candidates vary sharply between societies. Their framework offers a new diagnostic lens for understanding citizen (in)action when democracy is under threat, with implications for institutional design and the conditions under which voters can serve as effective democratic safeguards.

Bermond Scoggins recently received his PhD in political science from the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. His research focuses on understanding the extent to which voters, particularly in new democracies, tolerate illiberal and undemocratic policies.

Marc Jacob is an assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame, USA. His research is centered on comparative political behavior and political economy. His current book project examines how electoral dynamics shape democratic survival and decline, focusing on the cases of Poland, Turkey, and the United States. Marc holds a PhD in political science from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, USA.

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