Institutionalising electoral uncertainty and authoritarian regime survival

Abstract

Authoritarian incumbents routinely use democratic emulation as a strategy to extend their tenure in power. Yet, there is also evidence that multiparty competition makes electoral authoritarianism more vulnerable to failure. Proceeding from the assumption that the outcomes of authoritarian electoral openings are inherently uncertain, it is argued in this article that the institutionalisation of elections determines whether electoral authoritarianism promotes stability or vulnerability. By 'institutionalisation', it is meant the ability of authoritarian regimes to reduce uncertainty over outcomes as they regularly hold multiparty elections. Using discrete-time event-history models for competing risks, the effects of sequences of multiparty elections on patterns of regime survival and failure in 262 authoritarian regimes from 1946 to 2010 are assessed, conditioned on their degree of competitiveness. The findings suggest that the institutionalisation of electoral uncertainty enhances authoritarian regime survival. However, for competitive electoral authoritarian regimes this entails substantial risk. The first three elections substantially increase the probability of democratisation, with the danger subsequently diminishing. This suggests that convoking multiparty competition is a risky game with potentially high rewards for autocrats who manage to institutionalise elections. Yet, only a small number of authoritarian regimes survive as competitive beyond the first few elections, suggesting that truly competitive authoritarianism is hard to institutionalise. The study thus finds that the question of whether elections are dangerous or stabilising for authoritarianism is dependent on differences between the ability of competitive and hegemonic forms of electoral authoritarianism to reduce electoral uncertainty.

Rethinking the historical trajectory of ECE: From the “original sin” in democratization to redemocratization

“…Namely, there is state supported corruption from above, a politically arranged deep socio -economic polarization between winners and losers and a constant effort to occupy the entire political space to oppress the autonomy of all social and cultural fields. In the distortion of political system, the social desecuritization and/or fight against the external and internal "enemies" has been an important factor in the electoral success of neopopulist parties (see in general, Bernhard et al 2019). The survival of the autocratic regimes in ECE has also been secured by conquering the communicative space in the 2010s with "a skewed media landscape where publicly funded media produce a discourse that paints the government as the guarantor of the national sovereignty and the opposition as the country's enemies" (Krakovsky 2019: XI).…”

Repeated Elections and Opposition Challenges in Malaysia

“…16 Some scholars suggest that holding elections destabilizes the regime when first introduced elections, but contributes to stability after several elections, bridging two competing claims about the effects of such repeated elections. 17 However, all of them focus on the dictator's regime maintenance strategy or the liberalization of civil society and political competition, so the opposition's changing strategic options are outside the scope of the analysis. The former study focuses on the effect of uncertainty reduction in elections and the latter on the self-enforcing effect of the regime on the rules of democracy, respectively.…”

Does intense electoral competition increase the government health expenditure in EAs?

“…According to the classical work on dictatorships by Bueno de Mesquita et al (2003), dictators do not provide public goods, but particularistic goods to supporters who are indispensable for their survival. Dictators, however, recently sustain their regime duration and survival by using democratic institutions, especially elections (Bernhard et al, 2020;Blaydes, 2008: 2;Geddes et al, 2018: 139;Hong and Park, 2016: 503;Kim and Kroeger, 2018: 254). Unlike dictators in closed autocracies, those in electoral autocracies (EA) must win elections to take power.…”