Liberalizing Electoral Outcomes in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes

Howard, Marc Morjé; Roessler, Philip

doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00189.x

Cited by 525 publications

(331 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…At worst, these elections may prolong temporarily the rule of some autocrats and possibly generate low levels of civil violence (Salehyan and Linebarger 2015). On the positive side, multiparty elections reduce the likelihood of large-scale civil conflict and may hasten the transition to democracy (e.g., Schedler 2002;Howard and Roessler 2006;Lindberg 2009;Donno 2013). …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elections and Civil War in Africa

Cheibub¹,

Hays²

2015

PSRM

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The view that multiparty elections in changing authoritarian regimes should be held sooner rather than later has been increasingly under attack. Critics argue that, under conditions of low institutional development, multiparty elections may lead to violence and civil war, rather than to the peaceful allocation of authority that everyone desires. Starting from the premise that elections are strategically timed and endogenous in transitioning authoritarian regimes, that is, more likely to be held when violence is imminent, we show that for Africa, the continent with the lowest levels of political institutionalization, elections do not increase the probability of a civil war initiation. In fact, for the post-Cold War period, the holding of multiparty elections is actually associated with a substantial reduction in the probability of civil war onset. To account for this pattern, we develop an informational theory of elections held under conditions that prevail in the post-Cold War, when foreign powers are reluctant to provide direct support for dictators (or their opponents) and elections are more reflective of the true level of a leader’s strength. We argue that, under these conditions, elections may prevent the eruption of a civil war that is already imminent, through two mechanisms: they may deter a weak opposition from initiating a war they are likely to lose or they may induce a weak dictator to offer ways to share power with the opposition.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elections and Civil War in Africa

Cheibub¹,

Hays²

2015

PSRM

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“…Does pre-election protest contribute to such electoral outcomes? While many studies consider opposition mobilization only weakly related to political change in electoral authoritarian regimes (Levitsky and Way 2010), others document the positive effects of protest mobilization on democratizing outcomes in such cases (Howard and Roessler 2006). I side with the scholarship favoring the effectiveness of electoral protest for democratic outcomes.…”

Section: Pre-election Mobilization and Electoral Outcome In Authoritamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are also a few studies that pay specific attention to contentious collective action undertaken by the opposition (Howard and Roessler 2006;Schedler 2009Schedler , 2013.…”

Section: Authoritarian Elections Mobilization and Democratizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To address this puzzle, scholars point to various factors such as the degree of competitiveness within the regime (Brownlee 2009a;Roessler and Howard 2009), linkage with democratic superpowers (Levitsky and Way 2010), international pressure on the fairness of elections (Donno 2013), features of the information environment (PopEleches and Robertson 2015), regime strategies such as fraud and harassment of the opposition, and opposition strategies such as coalition building (Bunce and Wolchik 2011;Donno 2013;Howard and Roessler 2006). I propose that pre-election protest also contributes to incumbent defeat and democratization.…”

Section: Authoritarian Elections Mobilization and Democratizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Howard and Roessler's (2006) study, for instance, uses data from the Cross-National Time-Series (Banks and Wilson 2013), which is based on coding of the average counts of demonstrations for the election year and the previous year in New York Times news articles. This approach is limited in three ways.…”

Section: Authoritarian Elections Mobilization and Democratizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Preelection Mobilization and Electoral Outcome in Authoritarian Regimes*

Kadivar¹

2017

Mobilization: An International Quarterly

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Does pre-election protest have an effect on the outcomes of authoritarian elections? Electoral authoritarian regimes use elections to consolidate their power and claim democratic legitimacy. Nonetheless, on some occasions authoritarian incumbents lose elections despite their advantages and a democratic breakthrough is achieved. I propose that pre-election protest contributes to such election results. Existing scholarship focuses primarily on the effectiveness of post-election upheavals, but the effects of pre-election protest are still theoretically and empirically understudied. This paper proposes a theory for why pre-election contention has an independent effect on incumbent defeat of authoritarian regimes and democratization. I present empirical support for the association between pre-election protest activities, incumbent defeat, and democratization using data from 190 elections across 65 countries with non-democratic regimes. The findings of this analysis have important implications for studies of social movements, authoritarian politics, and democratization. 2 Pre-Election Mobilization and Electoral Outcome in Authoritarian RegimesWhile elections are central to democracy, holding elections is not sufficient for a regime to be considered democratic. Most authoritarian regimes in the world hold elections in which the incumbents are almost always assured of victory due to abuse of power, violation of civil liberties, and electoral manipulation. Nonetheless, on rare occasions oppositions can defeat an authoritarian incumbent and achieve a democratic Democratization is one of the more significant consequences of popular mobilizations that has been understudied from the perspective of political process theory, the dominant approach of social movement studies (Tarrow 2012:21). The literature on the consequences of social movements, for instance, has mostly focused on the outcome of policy change since it studies the outcome of movements in the context of consolidated democracies (Amenta et al. 2010;Giugni 1998). To fill this gap, this paper builds on the general social movements scholarship and the few existing studies of movements in authoritarian states (Almeida 2003;Goodwin 2001;Wood 2000) in order to theorize the ability for contentious collective action to empower opposition groups and thus affect electoral outcomes in authoritarian regimes. Pre-election protest has an independent effect on electoral outcomes because it shows there are viable alternatives to the regime, encourages defection within the regime, signals the spread of grievances to both the regime and voters, and sometimes create new grievances when faced with repression.

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Local politics for democratic quality and depth: Lessons from South Korea

Yap

2021

Asia & Pacific Policy Stud

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Liberalizing Electoral Outcomes in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes

Cited by 525 publications

References 31 publications

Elections and Civil War in Africa

Elections and Civil War in Africa

Preelection Mobilization and Electoral Outcome in Authoritarian Regimes*

Local politics for democratic quality and depth: Lessons from South Korea

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