Eddies in the third wave: Protracted transitions and theories of democratization

Abstract

In the third wave's backwaters, where transitions are protracted and authoritarians seem unsinkable, incremental bargaining is the path for persistent opposition parties. This article outlines tentative propositions about actors and arenas of protracted transition, in reference to the under‐specified cases of transitions to democracy considered in this volume. It offers a general characterization of protracted transitions, drawing upon scant existing literature, but adding a more developed opposition‐based perspective to conventional depictions of authoritarian behaviour. Next, it specifies possible incentives for actors within opposition parties, and discusses the parties’ overall preferences in the trade‐off between short‐term co‐optation by the regime and longer‐term efforts to undermine the authoritarians. Finally it considers why the understudied electoral arena is so critical to these transitions, and offers four main reasons why opposition parties are such crucial actors. First, they have little to lose, at least in terms of their group's power within the regime. Second, effective opposition parties must remain ‘cause pure’ (at least for the most part) even given their need to broaden their coalition to reach a broader electorate, and despite temptations to submit to incumbent attempts at co‐optation. Third, the opposition parties must accept that unless external or economic factors intervene to turn a protracted transition into an abrupt one, the time horizon of the transition will be extended, and sheer endurance will be a great part of the challenge to the regime opposition. Fourth, even as opposition parties in some regions, or even at the national level, extract concessions, such concessions do not extend uniformly.