Competitive Authoritarian Regimes Research Articles

Elections and Democracy in Turkey: Reconsidering Competitive Authoritarianism in the Age of Democratic Backsliding

AbstractThis article reflects on the reasons why Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) could still win in the recent 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey despite, among other daunting issues, the deep economic crisis and their unsuccessful handling of the February 2023 earthquake. The article discusses the role of state apparatus and the media under a neopatrimonial system, as well as the role of the EU, which turned Turkey into a rentier state with the refugee deals. The discussion considers whether Turkey could still be seen as a competitive authoritarian regime and points to the difficulties in determining whether regimes such as the Turkish one are competitive authoritarian or not until the election results are seen and the opposition candidates actually win.

Only game in town? the persistence of competitive authoritarian regimes in modern Turkey

ABSTRACT Why do so many regimes remain competitive authoritarian? This article argues that institutional path dependence explains the persistence of competitive authoritarian regimes in which electoral competition exists, but is unfair. The weakness of institutions regulating free and fair interparty competition, like multi-candidate elections, a constitution and statutes safeguarding fundamental rights, and intraparty competition, like intraparty democracy, is path-dependent and self-reinforcing. In settings where competition is partly free and fair, ruling elites have an incentive to combine democratic and undemocratic laws and policies to defeat counterelites and neutralize intraparty competitors. The likely long-term outcome is a vicious cycle of limited democratization, competitive authoritarian regime formation, and competitive authoritarian regime consolidation. I assess the argument by tracing the historical trajectory of reforms on constitutionalism, civil liberties, and multi-candidate competition in post-1950 Turkey, where the limits on interparty and intraparty competition have been reproduced in remarkable historical continuity.

Conditional Cash Transfers and Voting for Incumbents under Democratic Backsliding: The Case of Honduras's Bono 10,000

As democracies worldwide have reverted to competitive authoritarian regimes or full dictatorships, some autocrats have used clientelist policies to strengthen their positions of power. We contend that autocrats can weaponise conditional cash transfers (CCTs) to shore up electoral support under democratic backsliding. In this vein, we analyse the impact of Honduras's Bono 10,000, a discretionary CCT, on the electoral support for the incumbent National Party and opposition blocs between 2013 and 2017, an era marked by the erosion of democracy. Using two survey waves from the AmericasBarometer by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), we show how the CCT boosted the electoral support for the National Party as democracy unravelled. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on how autocrats rely on carrots – not just sticks – to consolidate power.

A nova vaga de populismo autoritário internacional da década de 2010 também chegou à África? Os casos de Moçambique e Angola

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the possible impact of the most recent international authoritarian populist tendencies on sub-Saharan African political systems. Contrary to the main currents of interpretation, this paper argues that we are not in face of a new international influence or role model being locally followed, but in face of the most recent example of a long political-historical path of selective assimilation of international trends to local political systems as structured after independence. We are not witnessing to poor local replicas of the most recent international wave of authoritarian populism of 2010s, but to another selective assimilation of political features to serve the existing and locally dominant systems. Through the analysis of the specific cases of Mozambique and Angola, this paper theoretically and historically discusses the nature of regimes and political systems through a critical approach on the most recent historical/political science discussions of so-called hybrid regimes, combining liberal and illiberal features, that resort to concepts such as illiberal democracies, façade democracies, electoral autocracies, semi-authoritarian states, competitive authoritarian regimes, post-neo-liberal States, or new competitive authoritarian regimes, among others.

Multilevel Venue Shopping Amid Democratic Backsliding in New European Union Member States

Recently, various Central and Eastern European countries have experienced a regression of democratic quality, often resulting in the emergence of competitive (semi‐)authoritarian regimes with an illiberal governing ideology. This has often been accompanied by a closing political space for civil society groups. Based on a survey of more than 400 Polish, Hungarian, Czech, and Slovenian interest organizations, we explore, in the context of backsliding, the conditions under which organized interests shift their lobbying activities to alternative, i.e., EU or regional levels. Our statistical analyses indicate that it is rather exclusive policy‐making in general than a lack of individual group access to domestic policy networks that motivate organizations to engage in multilevel lobbying. However, it appears that organizational self‐empowerment and inter‐group cooperation are the “name of the game.” Even under the adverse conditions of democratic backsliding, organizations that are accumulating expertise, professionalizing their operations, and cooperating with other organizations not only can sustain access to (illiberal) national governments but also branch out their operations to the European and regional levels.

Captured City: Authoritarianism, Urban Space and Project Skopje 2014

AbstractThis article looks at different strategies in which authoritarianism operated in relation to the redesign of Skopje during the rule of the conservative party VMRO-DPMNE and its leader Nikola Gruevski. It argues that the promoters of the urban project called “Skopje 2014” relied on a set of nondemocratic mechanisms and involvement and coordination of various individuals and institutions on all levels to implement and legitimize the project and expand its political dominance. These ranged from state-driven mechanisms and urban design strategies to contributions of non-state groups, thus demonstrating a systematic effort behind the makeover of Skopje. Examining the project through the concept of authoritarianism, the article goes beyond (methodological) nationalism to understand the complexity of the revamp of North Macedonia’s capital. It also demonstrates how the party used its ideological principles to leave its enduring mark on Skopje’s urban environment. Additionally, the article points out the need to study urban space politics in the context of hybrid and competitive authoritarian regimes.

Opposition failures in forming pre-electoral coalitions in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT There is an enduring discussion in the literature on why African opposition parties often fail to unite to fight the incumbent from a position of strength. Much of the extant studies have examined success stories of pre-electoral coalition-building in established democracies. There is less focus on why African opposition parties fail to form coalitions. In seeking to contribute to this debate, the article examines why Zimbabwean opposition parties failed to coalesce to form a pre-electoral coalition ahead of the 2018 election. This is against the axiom in the literature that pre-electoral coalitions do matter in increasing opposition stakes in elections, as read in line with the historical context of countries like Kenya. Using evidence gleaned from a qualitative study, it is argued that opposition-led pre-electoral coalitions remain uneasy to establish, especially in competitive authoritarian regimes like Zimbabwe, owing to structural and co-ordination challenges.

Use of Religion in Blame Avoidance in a Competitive Authoritarian Regime: Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet)

Blame avoidance has been one of the most applied strategies by policy makers in both democratic and non-democratic regimes to avoid responsibility and accountability in cases of failure and tragic events. It is also known that politicians have used religion for Machiavellian purposes, as exactly advised by Machiavelli. However, a systematic empirical analysis of how religion is used for blame avoidance by politicians has not been conducted. In this article, we aim to address this gap by examining the empirical data derived from the weekly Friday sermon texts produced by Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs and delivered in more than 90 thousand mosques every week to a large segment of the population in Turkey, where the majority claims to be religious. Starting with its violent response to the peaceful Gezi protests in 2013, the ruling AKP has opened up a new phase in Turkish political history by resorting to civilizational populism: it blamed the Western world for financing and masterminding the protests, using the protestors as internal pawns to attack Turkey and the Muslim World, suppressed the protests brutally and entered into a populist authoritarian regime. Our paper shows, following this turn, how the Diyanet sermons started using religion to help with the AKP’s blame avoidance. The Diyanet either parroted the AKP’s conspiratorial narrative or tried to convince the citizens that all negativities are works of God and with these humans are being tested by God. The AKP’s use of religion to avoid blame is a text-book case of how both a religious institution and religious discourse can be used to help the incumbent avoid responsibility. Whenever, there was a problem that would the AKP votes, the Diyanet’s sermons tried to shift the blame to either God or citizens or conspiratorial enemies.

Protests by journalists in competitive authoritarian regimes: repertoire and impact in the case of Ukraine (2010-14)

ABSTRACT Studies of competitive authoritarian regimes regularly emphasize the political importance of media ownership, commonly assuming that the owners’ views are mirrored in the journalists’ writing and thus depriving journalists of a distinctive role. We move beyond this narrow perspective, analysing anti-regime protests by journalists in order to develop a better understanding of their role in competitive authoritarian regimes. Our exploratory case study of Ukraine—comparing the stable regime (2010-13) with the Euromaidan protests in late 2013/early 2014— is based on a protest event database of media freedom-related protest actions by journalists (N = 209) and interviews with journalists (N = 31). We examine protest forms, coalition building, claims and targets. To understand journalists’ agency in relation to political regime dynamics, we also look at their long-term engagement in contentious politics. While our results show that journalists’ own protest actions are not game changers, mainly due to journalists’ unwillingness to forge larger coalitions, the politicization of journalists, which leads to political activism and, most importantly, the creation of new media outlets with a political agenda, is an important element in regime dynamics and regime change.

The Long Game: The Opposition Wins in Honduras

Opposition parties in competitive authoritarian regimes rarely win elections by a landslide, especially where poverty, repressive security forces, and clientelism abound. Yet in November 2021, Honduras's opposition defeated the incumbent National Party against the odds. This essay argues that the opposition succeeded by "playing the long game": 1) building a mass-party organization, 2) continually participating in elections, and 3) forging unity through power-sharing. Paradoxically, the Honduran opposition's lack of international support incentivized these choices and became a blessing in disguise. Whether Xiomara Castro will rebuild democracy remains uncertain, but her coalition's route to power yields lessons for oppositions elsewhere.

Strongmen cry too: The effect of aerial bombing on voting for the incumbent in competitive autocracies

How does exposure to aerial bombing influence voting for the target country’s leadership? Do voters tend to punish incumbents for policy failure? These questions are relevant for understanding the target country’s postwar politics because aerial bombing remains one of the deadliest and most widely used military options for coercive bargaining. Despite the historical and contemporary relevance of these questions, there are only a few studies in the air-power literature arguing that strategic bombing produces a temporary rally effect but no subsequent political consequences other than political apathy. Most studies ignore important variation within states even though leadership responsibility can vary tremendously on the substate level. This article analyzes the effect of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia on Serbian local elections using the difference-in-differences identification strategy and identifies the effect of airstrikes on the vote-share of Slobodan Milosevic’s regime. The results show that the regime’s vote-share is 2.6% lower in municipalities exposed to the bombing. Challenging prior studies, this finding demonstrates that retrospective voting applies to aerial bombing even in competitive authoritarian regimes.

Autocratic heterogeneity in the provision of environmental protection

Only few studies have investigated the link between the heterogeneity of non-democratic regime types and environmental protection. This study disaggregates authoritarian regimes and identifies four patterns of environmental performance. Using 16 indicators of environmental performance, autocratic subtypes such as royal dictatorships, military dictatorships, hegemonic autocracies, and competitive authoritarian regimes are compared and contrasted with democracies. The results demonstrate that a democracy advantage in the protection of the environment, as many former studies find it, typically cannot be confirmed for all autocratic subtypes. We rather detect a quite manifold picture when the variety of authoritarianism is taken into account.

Regime types and winner-loser Gaps in support for democracy in East Asia

ABSTRACT What is the effect of regime type on democratic support among political winners and losers? Existing studies on the winner-loser gap in political attitudes mostly discuss satisfaction with democracy and political trust without testing the conditional effect of political regimes. We argue that because winners and losers have different understandings of the word “democracy,” support for democracy as an ideal political system is not a valid measurement of democratic support in autocracies. In this article, we examine support for liberal democratic values in different regime types. We find a clear winner-loser gap in competitive authoritarian regimes since supporters of the ruling parties are less enthusiastic about democratic principles that would constrain executive power than those who support the opposition. In democracies, this gap is much smaller as all voters may become political underdogs after free and fair elections; both winners and losers prefer civil liberties and limited executive power, therefore they uphold democratic values at similar levels. We test our argument using four waves of the Asian Barometer Survey.

Media pluralism in competitive authoritarian regimes - a comparative study: Serbia and Hungary

This paper explores media pluralism in two European former communist countries, which have regressed to electoral authoritarianism in recent years, after a period of democratic transition and partial consolidation - the Republic of Hungary and the Republic of Serbia. The aim of the study is to describe similarities and differences in the media policies of these countries regarding media pluralism, and to explain social and political context that generates the growing risk for media pluralism. Descriptive comparative methods were used, based on the original set of data quantified within the annual national MPM reports. The reference time frame covers 2020 and 2017. The risk assessment indicators for media pluralism were compared in three areas: normative protection, political independence and media market plurality. The research finds that competitive authoritarian regimes? methods for free, independent and pluralistic media suppression have been intensively used in both countries regardless of membership status in the European Union.

Electoral Volatility and Regime Survival in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes

Electoral Volatility and Regime Survival in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes

Skopje 2014: Disneyfication Of A City Or Powerful Tool In The Hands Of The Competitive Authoritarian Regime In Macedonia?1

Abstract The paper focuses on research on the political decision-making process in the Skopje 2014 project. It describes the procedure for execution of the project from the aspect of transparency and involvement of different segments of Macedonian society based on journalistic article analysis. Thematic analysis was used as the method to accomplish the research. The analysis of the articles shows the undemocratic way of making decisions about the future urban landscape of the capital. In this case, the Disneyfication of the Skopje city centre was only used as a tool for the construction of a competitive authoritarian regime.

Forming Pre-Electoral Coalitions in Competitive Authoritarian Contexts: The Case of the 2018 Parliamentary Elections in Turkey

ABSTRACT In competitive authoritarian regimes, forming a pre-electoral coalition (PEC) provides a mean for opposition parties to defeat the incumbent party. In Turkey, the ruling Justice and Development Party initiated a PEC by forming the People’s Alliance with two other parties. Like the opposition in other competitive authoritarian regimes, Turkey’s opposition parties also formed a PEC, namely the Nation Alliance. Looking at the political affinity of these parties by using their election manifestos and Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) data, the paper argues that while the People’s Alliance was formed by ideologically close parties, the Nation Alliance was composed of ideologically distant parties, whose main aim, under a competitive authoritarian regime, was to prevent the incumbent from gaining a parliamentary majority.

The Agency of Journalists in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of Ukraine During Yanukovich’s Presidency

On the example of Ukraine during the Yanukovich presidency (2010–2014) this article explores which factors support journalists’ agency in relation to censorship pressure in a competitive authoritarian regime. It shows that a critical mass of journalists existed who reacted to censorship pressure with rejection. Based, first of all, on 31 semi-structured interviews, we examine the working conditions of prominent national journalists and analyse how they describe their role and motivations. We argue that the nature of competitive authoritarianism offers journalists opportunities for critical reporting, but that it is individual characteristics of journalists—including professional ethics, networks, and job mobility—which define whether and how the respective opportunities are used.

Automated Journalism and the Freedom of Media: Understanding Legal and Ethical Implications in Competitive Authoritarian Regime

ABSTRACT Today news organizations of many developed countries, being part of the digital world, are heralding new ways of news production through automated journalism and embracing new sort of technology-related challenges. The relationship between journalists and automation can vary significantly in different socio-cultural contexts, suggesting considering how automated journalism impacts media freedom through diverse legal and ethical problems. While the implications of automated journalism for media freedom in many Western democratic countries are in question, it is imperative to look at its impacts on media freedom in competitive authoritarian regimes. This study particularly looks at the case of Pakistan. Drawing on the new institutionalism theory, hence this study contributes an analysis of possible legal and ethical dilemmas that can arise from the practice of automated journalism in Pakistan’s journalism institution, affecting the state of media freedom in the country. This analysis is imperative for preparing the Pakistani journalists for automated journalism practice and for the development of a regulatory framework that can recognize transformations led by automation in journalism. Moreover, this study uses the qualitative method of in-depth interviews and uses thematic analysis to present the study’s findings.

Embattled Ballots, Quiet Streets: Competitive Authoritarianism and Dampening Anti-Government Protests in Turkey

ABSTRACT Mass protests frequently occur in electoral autocracies. However, the opposite is true in Turkey, despite mounting grievances and a strong opposition presence with institutional resources. We argue that competitive authoritarian regimes, a subset of electoral autocracies, may dampen mass protests, allowing the opposition an opportunity to defeat the incumbents through elections. Studying Turkey’s main opposition party, we identify three mechanisms that show how politicians strategically respond to the regime’s incentives and constraints leading to protest-averse behaviour. First, the regime’s repression capacity discourages the opposition from openly supporting a mass protest. Second, the opposition learns to target the median voter, which leads to political moderation and protest averseness. Finally, prospective electoral success reinforces the opposition’s commitment to a ballot-centred approach.