First, it is important to clarify what it means for a democracy to be “consolidated,” and how the threat of “democratic deconsolidation” is defined. Consolidationrepresents the level of trust that individuals have in democratic institutions. Political scientists Linz and Stepan (1996) once defined consolidation as the process through which democracy and its institutions become “the only game in town,” meaning that there are no direct challenges to the democratic regime per se and that it becomes deeply internalized by the majority of citizens. More recently, Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk (2016) measured this by looking at support for dem-ocracy, the influence of anti-system parties, and the broad acceptance of demo-cratic rules. The health of liberal democracy depends on the faith that voters have in it, especially when compared to other systems of government. If voters lose this basic faith, the liberal democratic system will begin to erode (Plattner 2017) . This lessening of the trust that individuals have in democratic institutions is called deconsolidation.