| dc.description.abstract | Facing democratic erosion, when do people take to the streets to protest in defence of democracy? Since the early 2000s both electoral and liberal democracies have experienced a wave of democratically elected incumbents seeking to, and succeeding in, eroding central democratic rights, norms, institutions, and procedures. While an extensive literature exists on how protests can drive democratization processes, much less is known about the role of collective direct action in episodes of democratic erosion. A vibrant civil society and a citizenry committed to democratic principles are often theorized to function as a bulwark against authoritarianism. However, systematic research on both if, and when, people will defend democracy is undeniably lacking. In this thesis, I argue that democratic erosion affects both the opportunities and the motivation to engage in protests, and that these mechanisms have contradictory mobilizing effects. Through combining data on democratic erosion along different components and data on anti-state protests, I create a panel data set with near global scope covering the time period 1990-2020. Implications of my theoretical framework are tested in a regression framework using country fixed-effects Poisson models. I find no evidence that democratic erosion is positively associated with increased protest activity. Some variation appears when disaggregating democratic erosion and looking at erosion targeting different democratic components. However, the vast majority of my findings suggest that democratic erosion does not spur protests in defence of democracy. The results challenge the widely held assumption that citizens will defend democracy and function as a bulwark against authoritarianism. Thus, these findings have considerable implications for the theoretical and empirical understanding of democratic erosion, and how democracy may be preserved. Moreover, this thesis informs the emerging scholarship on democratic erosion and autocratization, as well as the established literature on protests and contentious politics. | eng |