Democratic Accountability and Support for Democracy: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Following attempts to undermine democracy, institutions can withstand these challenges by holding anti-democratic actors accountable. How do such accountability measures shape public democratic support? Leveraging the unexpected timing of the coup charges brought against former president Bolsonaro by Brazil's Prosecutor General, we examine citizens' reactions to democratic accountability processes. Taking advantage of the fortuitous timing of the charges during our survey fieldwork, we leverage this exogenous event to demonstrate that the charges significantly bolstered democratic attitudes among non-Bolsonaro voters, while having no discernible effect on his supporters. These effects decrease as the time window used in the analysis expands, suggesting they may be short-lived. Our findings challenge prevailing theories suggesting that partisan loyalties should lead supporters to reject democratic institutions that target their ingroups. This study contributes novel evidence on democratic resilience by capturing real-time reactions to consequential accountability processes outside experimental settings.