Democratic Backsliding Damages Foreign Public Support for Security Cooperation

Abstract

Does democratic backsliding shape foreign publics' preferences for security cooperation with a partner state? We examine this question through two multinational survey experiments with nearly 10,000 respondents across six countries, focusing on intelligence sharing---a form of security cooperation that is often deeply institutionalized and thus relies heavily on trust. In our first experiment across the United States' Five Eyes intelligence partners, information about democratic backsliding in both a hypothetical partner and the US consistently reduces support for intelligence sharing. A follow-up study in the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and South Korea indicates that the backsliding penalty extends beyond the Five Eyes context. We also show that backsliding generates a substantially larger penalty than economic downturn, suggesting that our result is not reducible to a negative-information prime. These findings show that domestic political deterioration can erode the public foundations of international collaboration, with implications for security cooperation and alliance cohesion.

Keywords: democratic backsliding, intelligence sharing, security cooperation, the United States, Five Eyes, Japan, South Korea, democratic cooperation