“When they go low, we kick them”: The reciprocal nature of citizens’ support for democratic transgressions

This study examines how citizens respond to democratic transgressions by political opponents and whether they, in turn, support reciprocal transgressions by their own party. Drawing on psychological theories of negative reciprocity, we argue that commitment to democratic principles is relational, shaped by the (un)democratic behavior of other political actors. Through survey experiments in England (N = 4,040) and the United States (N = 4,084), we find that exposure to opponents’ transgressions more than doubles citizens’ likelihood of endorsing undemocratic actions by their own party. Deductive coding of open-ended responses (N = 907) reveals that many justify reciprocal transgressions as a way to restore fairness and protect democracy from an uneven playing field. Our findings highlight the need for an interactive approach to the study of democratic violations that captures the dynamic and complex nature of citizens’ attitudes towards undemocratic behavior.