When Do Autocratizing Incumbents Lose Elections?

When do electorates remove incumbents who undermine democracy? Existing research explains why voters tolerate autocratizing leaders, but we know less about when they hold them accountable. We develop a framework of electoral accountability under autocratization to evaluate when attacks on democracy trigger electoral backlash, considering the scope of autocratization (i.e., the breadth of institutional erosion) and its visibility (i.e., the extent to which these actions are clearly legible as undemocratic to voters), while situating these features alongside preexisting institutional strength, economic performance, and political culture. Drawing on experimental evidence, an original dataset of 105 elections since 1990 in which autocratizing incumbents sought reelection, hand-coded measures of autocratization scope and visibility in recent electoral contests, and comparative analyses of Poland and Zambia, we find that visibility, but not scope, is systematically linked to incumbent defeat. Our findings have implications for the conditions under which citizens can disrupt episodes of autocratization through electoral channels.