How Political Parties in Hybrid Regimes Help the Incumbent Maintain a Democratic Façade

Abstract

Why would a large incumbent party, that can by itself muster more than 45 per cent of electoral support, add seven insignificant political parties to its electoral list, thus providing them with a free ticket into the Assembly, state-sponsored financing for the next four years, and an independent deputy club in the Assembly? More importantly, why would the incumbent party, as a consequence of this deliberate decision, end up without a parliamentary majority? In this article, I discuss less frequently mentioned aspects of institutional design that can help us understand why the incumbent party makes such decisions and why a party system in a hybrid regime has a large number of parties. I offer qualitative evidence from postcommunist Serbia (1990–2018). The first two aspects refer to electoral design (but not the electoral formula or district magnitude): a larger number of parties under the incumbent party’s control provides stronger political influence in the Republican Electoral Commission and at polling stations on election day. In hybrid regimes, the incumbent party is interested in this influence because it can use it to arrange electoral fraud. The third aspect relates to parliamentary design: more parties in the Serbian Assembly under the incumbent party’s control secure more minutes on the floor for the incumbent party during parliamentary debate.