Feeding the Hand that Bit You: Voting for Ex-authoritarian Rulers in Russia and Bolivia

Abstract

Abstract: What could be motivating voters in transition countries to vote for leaders who have proven themselves to be skilled at violating human rights, repressing civil liberties, and ruling without democratic institutions? We test hypotheses related to this question by using a least-similar-systems design in which we search for common predictors of vote choice in presidential elections from two countries that differ in their past and present political and economic situations: Bolivia and Russia. We find consistent patterns in these two very different countries, which leads to the conclusion that voters for ex-authoritarian candidates or parties are not merely motivated by considerations that typically shape vote choice in long-standing democracies, but are also distinguished by a preference for non-democratic political systems. Key words: authoritarianism, Bolivia, elections, Russia ********** The late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed an almost unprecedented spread of democracy across the globe, resulting in what Samuel Huntington calls the third wave of democratization. At the time, the joy with which citizens greeted the downfall of authoritarianism and tyranny made the march towards freedom seem unstoppable and irreversible. Who can forget the scene of Alexander Dubcek, the tragic hero of the 1968 Prague spring, returning to Prague in the fall of 1989 to the roar of the crowds in Wenceslas Square? Or the utter triumph of the Solidarity movement in Poland's first competitive election of the postcommunist era, in which the ruling communist party lost practically every seat that was subject to legitimate competition? (1) Or the crowds that flowed into the streets of Santiago, Chile, upon the news that General Pinochet had lost his plebiscite to extend his personal rule? A decade and a half later, this inevitable march of democratization seems under attack from multiple fronts. Although most attention has been focused on topics such as international terrorism, ethnic and religious conflict, and the dangers of failed states, it is important to remember that even in the 1990s voters in transition countries around the world chose to cast their ballots for the very leaders and parties that had previously repressed their countries. Long before Russian President Vladimir Putin's most recent moves to restrict the franchise in Russia, substantial portions of the Russian electorate were already casting votes for the remnants of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. (2) Outside of Russia, the election of ex-communists and members of communist successor parties has been a prevalent trend in many former communist countries? Similarly, voters in Latin America have cast their ballots for former dictators, military governors, coup-plotters, and torturers. (4) In Africa former dictators have also been voted into office in competitive elections. (5) These elections have come at a time in which, despite the proliferation of electoral democracy, the quality of many new democracies seems to be deteriorating (Diamond 2002, 22; Rose and Shin 2001, 331). (6) Although questions about the quality of democracy have received attention in political science literature, the topic of why people vote for former authoritarian rulers in free elections has been analyzed less frequently (although see Azpuru 2001; Canache 2002a; and Carrion 2001), and especially not in a cross-regional framework. We believe that the question deserves more focused consideration. To date, most analyses of why voters support parties and candidates from the pre-democratic era have largely been contained in studies focused on providing explanations of countrywide voting patterns for multiple types of parties and candidates. As a result, hypotheses are not particularly focused on the phenomenon of supporting ex-authoritarian leaders, but rather on voting behavior more generally. In this article, we put the question of why citizens might choose to cast votes in free elections for parties or candidates that ruled in the pre-democratic era at the center of the analysis, testing hypotheses that specifically address this question. …