Reversals of democratic backsliding, while causes for celebration, have generated unique, new challenges for contemporary democracies, as seen in cases like Poland, Brazil, and the United States. A new problem has emerged in the wake of these “near miss” events, where electoral victories by opposition forces have halted institutional declines. The newly incumbent pro-democracy party or coalition must reverse the damage to institutional quality while simultaneously maintaining or increasing electoral support for democracy and pro-democracy political forces.

To achieve this, pro-democracy parties or coalitions must balance the competing obligations to (1) make good on campaign promises to restore democratic institutions and (2) deliver on governance or policy commitments. This tradeoff is further compounded by a potential pressure to achieve democratic restoration through rule of law-abiding means.

To understand this dilemma, we field the same survey experiment in six cases with mixed degrees of democratic backsliding and reversal: Poland, Brazil, the United States, India, Zambia, and Guatemala. Our series of vignette and conjoint experiments evaluates how voters weigh these competing obligations of democracy restoring parties at both the election and governing stage. Our results point to a bind that parties who run on restoring democracy face: while voters may endorse a pro-democracy message, once these parties are elected, those same voters continue to prioritize their own policy interests. These results also reveal that for parties who want to remain both electorally popular and reverse democratic backsliding, it may be more strategic to restore democracy by non-rule of law-abiding means.