Contagion of Institutional Cowardice

Powerful institutions and elites can imitate each other’s failures to resist authoritarian pressure: when a few high‑status actors publicly capitulate, the reputational and network effects make subsequent resistance increasingly rare. The result is not just isolated moral failure but a social cascade that reshapes institutional response norms and weakens democratic checks. — Naming and studying this contagion matters because it reframes responses to illiberal politics as a coordination and social‑network problem, suggesting different remedies (norm restoration, reputational levers, institutional design) than purely legal or partisan fixes.