Democratic Stress and American Public Perceptions of Allies: The Case of South Korea

Abstract

Conventional wisdom in political science holds that democratic institutions and norms facilitate international cooperation. We argue that this advantage is fragile to adverse signals: democratic stress---publicly visible signs of uncertainty surrounding democratic institutions and norms---can undermine it. Specifically, democratic stress in a partner country generates doubts among foreign publics about that country's reliability and efficacy, even if the episode proves temporary. Leveraging the 2024 self-coup in South Korea, we conducted a survey experiment in the United States to test this argument. We find that South Korean democratic stress reduces Americans' perceptions of South Korea's reliability and efficacy. This effect is robust across different frames: even when the episode is portrayed as evidence of democratic "resilience," American perceptions remain damaged. These findings suggest that highly visible democratic stress can erode public confidence in an alliance even after a crisis is resolved.

Keywords: South Korea, the United States, democratic peace, democratic stress