Book Talk, "Democratic Commitment: Why Citizens Tolerate Democratic Backsliding" (OUP, 2025), Natasha Wunsch

ABSTRACT
Why do citizens often fail to resist democratic backsliding? This book claims that political culture is key to explaining the electoral success and enduring public support for authoritarian-leaning leaders despite their open violations of democratic standards. It posits that heterogeneous understandings of democracy and a lack of liberal democratic commitment leave important parts of the electorate vulnerable to buy-outs and illiberal appeals by political elites. Leveraging a mixed-methods design, the book presents extensive empirical analyses that combine focus groups, discourse analysis, and original survey data including two conjoint experiments in Hungary and Poland. Its findings show how, despite widespread generic support for democracy as a regime form, divergent understandings of democracy persist among citizens in both countries. Establishing the linkages between political culture and political behaviour, this monograph demonstrates the crucial role citizens’ democratic attitudes play in enabling the deepening and entrenchment of democratic backsliding. Its findings hold important implications for practical efforts to bolster democratic resilience and boost mass support for liberal democracy.
https://academic.oup.com/book/60927

BIOS
Natasha Wunsch
Natasha Wunsch is Professor of European Studies as well as co-director of the Centre for European Studies at the University of Fribourg. Previously, she was Assistant Professor of Political Science/European Integration at Sciences Po Paris , Senior Researcher at ETH Zurich and Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and the University of Oxford . She is currently Chair of the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union. Natasha Wunsch received her PhD from University College London in 2016 and defended her habilitation at ETH Zurich in 2023. Previously, she completed a dual Master’s degree in European Studies and Political Science at Sciences Po Paris and the Free University of Berlin . In addition to her academic activities, she sits on the Academic Advisory Committee of the German Council on Foreign Relations and on the Academic Advisory Board of the Institute for European Politics . She is also a member of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group. Her research interests lie at the interface between European and comparative politics. She studies processes of democracy promotion as well as democratic regression primarily in the post-communist space and is interested in the implications of current challenges to liberal democracy for European cooperation and the process of European integration. Her research has been published in the Journal of European Public Policy, the Journal of Common Market Studies and Democratization, among others. In a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Ambizione), she is currently investigating the role of citizens’ democratic attitudes in processes of democratic erosion.

Julian Culp
Julian Culp is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Fellow of the Center for Critical Democracy Studies at The American University of Paris. Previously, he was a lecturer in philosophy and political theory at the Goethe University of Frankfurt, where he received his Habilitation and PhD in philosophy. Culp was visiting professor at the University of Graz, held postdoctoral fellowships from the University of Toronto and the University of Louvain, and spent research stays at Duke and Princeton universities. Culp is the author of Global Justice and Development (Palgrave, 2014) and Democratic Education in a Globalized World (Routledge, 2019), as well as of numerous articles in journals such as Philosophy Compass, Theory and Research in Education, Third World Quarterly, Social Philosophy & Policy, and Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung. He is co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Democratic Education (CUP, 2023), the journal Analyse & Kritik – Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory (De Gruyter), and the book series Philosophy of Education – Debates and Constellations (Brill and Mentis).