Cheerleaders for autocracy: parliamentary speech making during democratic backsliding in Malawi and Zambia

Legislatures worldwide have played a decisive role in enabling and preventing democratic backsliding. Although most research has focused on the formal legislative role of parliaments in the backsliding process, this study focuses on the behavior of individual legislators and their discursive support for executives. We argue that government parties are likely to enhance pressure on government party legislators to support the executive during periods of backsliding. Using a new dataset of over 152,000 speeches from parliaments in Malawi and Zambia, we show that in both Malawi and Zambia, government party MPs were significantly more positive vis‐à‐vis the executive in parliamentary speeches during periods of backsliding. However, opposition MPs were not more critical of the executive in periods when democracy was eroding. The findings have important implications for understanding the institutional role of parties and legislatures in the process of backsliding.