Since the 1990s, the literature on External Democracy Promotion (EDP) expanded exponentially. Despite widely supported conclusions on EDP (in)effectiveness in fostering democratization and preventing democratic backsliding are still lacking, the literature has generated sophisticated explanations of these processes. Among them, Levitsky and Way’s (L&W’s) linkage and leverage theory stands out as one of the most influential. According to Tolstrup, however, their underestimation of domestic agency constitutes a crucial lacuna, which he proposes to fill through the concept of “Gatekeeping Elite” that underlines a significant impact of local actors on the linkage dimension and, consequently, on EDP (in)effectiveness. I believe that Tolstrup’s intuition can be further developed, expanding even more the explanatory power of L&W’s theory. I claim that domestic actors may exert a crucial influence also on the leverage dimension, thanks to “diversionary behaviours” that local elites may use to change external actors’ interests and preferences, persuading them to limit their democratizing pressures and thus reduce their own vulnerability to EDP processes. To assess the plausibility of this claim, I perform a congruence analysis on the recent and crucial case of autocratization in Serbia (EU candidate country), which is not fully explained by the aforementioned models.

自1990年代以来，有关促进外部民主的文献呈指数级增长。尽管仍缺乏关于EDP在促进民主化和防止民主倒退方面的有效性的广泛支持的结论，但文献对这些过程做出了详尽的解释。其中，Levitsky和Way（L＆W）的联系和杠杆理论是最具影响力的理论之一。然而，根据托尔斯鲁普（Tolstrup）的说法，他们对国内代理机构的低估构成了一个关键缺陷，他建议通过填补“门卫精英”的概念来填补这一缺陷，该概念强调了本地参与者对这种联系的重大影响尺寸，因此，对EDP（无效）的有效性。我相信，托尔斯楚普的直觉可以得到进一步发展，从而进一步扩大L＆W理论的解释力。我声称，由于本地精英可能会使用“转移行为”来改变外部行为者的利益和偏好，因此国内行为者也可能对杠杆维度产生至关重要的影响，从而说服他们限制其民主化压力，从而降低自身的脆弱性。 EDP​​流程。为了评估这一说法的合理性，我对塞尔维亚（欧盟候选国）最近发生的关键性专制化案例进行了全等分析，上述模型并未对此做出充分解释。