The rise of authoritarian multiparty governments

Abstract

While multiparty government is associated with democracy, we use a new dataset to show that autocracies increasingly include multiple parties in government: In 2016, almost 50% of dictatorships did so. This is puzzling because the literature assumes that there is one ruling party, and considers granting outsiders access to government a risky and costly strategy. We argue that authoritarian multiparty government (AMG) emerges when the autocrat must coopt outsiders to prevent a unified opposition from arising. Existing research would suggest that most AMGs are arrangements where multiple parties are included in the cabinet, but only the ruler’s party matters. However, we demonstrate that coalition partners often have real influence, and that AMGs positively correlate with social divides, civil war and “democratic” institutions. Results suggest that AMG is an overlooked survival strategy, and highlight the need to adopt a broader perspective on parties – rather than the party – in dictatorships.