Why Vote for a Co-Opted Party? Endogenous Government Power Increases and Control of Opposition Politicians in Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

Why do voters in electoral autocracies vote for opposition parties that are co-opted by the government? The logic of electoral accountability should lead constituents to vote such parties out, and parties, knowing this, should never agree to be co-opted. Yet there is evidence that constituents often do not sanction opposition parties for failing to prevent the government from consolidating power. Standard accountability models suggest that this accountability failure is due to the parties having developed good reputations. This article develops a formal theory that offers a novel explanation for accountability failures specific to electoral autocracies. The theory shows how a consolidation of power by an authoritarian regime, increasing its ability to punish opposition politicians, can lead citizens not to vote opposition parties out of office even after seeing them fail to prevent a consolidation of power.

Party Competition and Ideology in Hong Kong: A New Manifesto Coding Dataset

“…For example, Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) adjusted its policy positions based on the support enjoyed by populist and conservative opposition parties (Greene 2007). According to Kosterina (2017), much of the literature assumes that the interests of the opposition parties are synonymous with those of their constituents. This assumption may work to the detriment of understanding political dynamics in hybrid regimes, as people may even become dissatisfied with opposition groups in response to behavior such as collaboration with the regime (e.g., Bunce and Wolchik 2010).…”

Implications of the existence of opposition political parties as checks and balances in the implementation of democracy

“…If the government seeks to establish a nuanced atmosphere of articulation as a veiled goal in the power structure and intersperses the reduction of the existence of the opposition with contradictory criticism, in the same situation democracy is nothing more than the notion of external hierarchy to be veiled portrait of oligarchy depicting the failure of state responsibility. Failure to govern autocratically can have devastating consequences, as it increases the government's ability to reduce opposition deemed uncooperative (Kosterina, 2017) and leaves no opportunity to show an excellent reputation as a defender of various interests of society. Until now, the culture of opposition has not been deeply rooted in Indonesian democracy, which is manifestly demonstrated by the arrogance of the rulers who ignore the legitimacy and decision-making power of opposition parties (Alif, 2019).…”

Political Oppositions in Democratic and Authoritarian Regimes: A State-of-the-Field(s) Review

“…Specifically, why a sizeable share of supporters of an opposition party continues to support that party after it has been co-opted by the regime remains one of the major puzzles in this area. There has been some valuable theoretical modelling (Kosterina 2017), but very little empirical research to date. This is only one of the elements of authoritarian party system persistence and change, whose particular dynamics have been captured in a little-noticed article by Grigorii Golosov (2013).…”