Dominant Party Regimes Research Articles

Opponent campaign visits in dominant party regimes

Opponent campaign visits in dominant party regimes

Voting behaviour after the collapse of a dominant party regime in Malaysia: ethno-religious backlash or economic grievances?

ABSTRACT The rise of an Islamist party (PAS) in the 2022 general election caused concern that a massive shift towards an ethno-religious backlash was under way in Malaysia. This paper argues that this is not necessarily the case. First, the number of PAS’s seats was inflated by malapportionment. More important, analyses of original surveys reveal that PAS benefitted from the last-minute, pro-PN swing of undecided voters, who were mainly motivated by economic concerns. This paper illustrates how economic, distributive, and governance grievances affected voting behaviour and discusses how to balance competing demands after the collapse of a dominant party regime.

The road to durable democracy: dominant party regimes, party politics and democratic survival

ABSTRACT This study examines why regime survival rates vary across young democracies. The author argues that there is a relationship between the type of authoritarian regime and the survival of subsequent democracies. Old regime elites inherit valuable resources from former dominant party regimes that may increase the likelihood of authoritarian successor parties (ASPs) performing well under democracy. This, in turn, for one thing, reduces the fragmentation of the new ruling parties, which inoculates young democracies against political instability that could lead to regime collapse. For another, it can effectively check the government’s power, thus preventing a new ruling party from crossing the line from democracy to authoritarianism. This study considers the hypothesis that dominant party regimes have a positive impact on the electoral performance of ASPs under democracy, thus contributing to the longevity of democracies, and tests that hypothesis by combining quantitative and qualitative analysis.

The Politics of Ethnonational Accommodation Under a Dominant Party Regime: Ethiopia’s Three Decades’ Experience

Ethiopia is the most prominent example of the late 20th-century adoption of federalism to accommodate diversity and complete state-building. This article explores the implementation of federalism and accommodation of ethnonational diversity in dominant party regimes by using Ethiopia as a case. Drawing on legal documents, literature, news sources and government reports, the article argues that federalism enabled distinctive groups to promote their culture, use their languages and exercise self-rule in their territory. However, ethnonationalities’ constitutionally proclaimed self-determination rights and the practice rarely correspond. Although all ethnonationalities have the same constitutional rights, some are still subjugated, and self-rule remains their dream. The dominant party regime in Ethiopia met demands for self-rule and accommodation with suppression and violence. The constitution grants regions to use their legislative powers to accommodate region-specific demands; nevertheless, regions cannot operate out of the narrow framework of the federal ruling party. Thus, regions became repressive agents of the centre rather than genuine self-rule agents. Insights from Ethiopia have broader implications for states embracing federalism.

Does Political Oversight of the Bureaucracy Increase Accountability? Field Experimental Evidence from a Dominant Party Regime

Concerned with poor service delivery, a large literature studies accountability of politicians to voters. This article instead considers accountability relationships within governments—the ability of politicians to implement policies by holding bureaucrats responsible for their actions. In collaboration with the Ugandan government, I conducted a field experiment across 260 local governments. The objective of the reform was to empower local politicians to exercise closer oversight over the bureaucracy through training and the dissemination of financial information. Lowered oversight costs increase politicians’ monitoring effort and the quality of services, but only in areas where the political leadership is not aligned with the dominant party. In areas under ruling-party control, politicians fear uncovering mismanagement of funds. In contrast to scholars arguing that insulating bureaucrats allows them to do their jobs more effectively, these findings imply that increased political oversight can improve government responsiveness in settings with a modicum of party competition.

The Malaysian Election Commission: Navigating Electoral Authoritarianism and Political Change

AbstractThe urgency of electoral reforms has long been identified as a key to improving democracy in Malaysia. For decades, electoral manipulation through gerrymandering, malapportionment, and issues with the electoral roll and conduct of elections have undermined democratic quality and competition. The Malaysian Election Commission (EC) has – understandably – come under scrutiny for its role in facilitating and sustaining these problems. However, what requires a greater level of attention is the question of how the EC – despite its position as a constitutional institution that exists independently from the other branches of government – has operated in ways that undermined Malaysia's democracy and maintained a dominant party regime for over six decades. This Article brings this to light by examining the structural, institutional, and political conditions that shape the EC's operation, particularly with regard to re-delineation of constituencies and the conduct of elections. It argues that flaws in constitutional design, along with subsequent constitutional amendments, have rendered the EC vulnerable to partisan capture and thus affected its ability to function as an independent constitutional institution. In addition, this Article demonstrates how changes in political imperatives and judicial restraint in reviewing the EC's decision-making have also contributed to the deficiencies in Malaysia's electoral democracy.

Closing the Gap: Information and Mass Support in a Dominant Party Regime

What role does information play in shaping mass support in dominant party settings? We conduct a field experiment during the 2016 Ugandan parliamentary elections that provides voters with informati...

Local-Level Democratic Backsliding? The Consolidation of Aspiring Dominant-Party Regimes in Hungary and Poland

AbstractAspiring dominant-party regimes often institute major institutional and political reforms at the national level to ensure they retain control. However, subnational politics is an important, under-studied, component of regime consolidation. This study uses mayoral races in Hungary and Poland from 2006 to 2018 to examine two factors that may inhibit dominant-party regime consolidation in local politics: the use of two-round, i.e. runoff, electoral systems and strategic coordination among opposition parties. While we find little evidence that strategic coordination can lead to widespread opposition success in single-round systems, we do find that increasing the number of candidates decreases the likelihood of the nationally dominant party winning in the first round while not affecting the second round. As such, two-round mayoral elections may be an important buffer to dominant-party regime consolidation and may provide a training ground for the future opposition.

Discretionary Military Action in Political Time

This study investigates whether a president’s place in Stephen Skowronek’s theory of political time affects the likelihood that the president will use his power as commander-in-chief to take discretionary military actions abroad. The study presents a new approach to an age-old question: what makes the president more or less likely to decide to use military force abroad? The study’s theory section combines Skowronek’s framework and the larger political time the literature with insights from literature on diversionary theory, foreign policy decision-making, and executive-legislative relations. The political time literature argues that the president’s relationship with the dominant party regime of their day, and the strength of that regime, creates systematic incentives for presidents who serve during similar places in political time. The theoretical framework presented in this study argues that presidents who are unaffiliated with the dominant party regime of their day will be more likely than others to engage American armed forces in minor military conflicts. The study uses two datasets to test this argument and finds evidence that presidents who serve during the politics of preemption and the politics of reconstruction are more likely than other presidents to order the military into relatively small-scale, minor international conflicts. This finding builds on Skowronek’s argument that presidents who serve during the politics of articulation are the most likely to engage in major wars.

Eroding Support from Below: Performance in Local Government and Opposition Party Growth in South Africa

AbstractHow does support for opposition parties grow in dominant party systems? Most scholarship on the rise of competitive elections in dominant party regimes focuses on elite defections from the ruling party and coordination by opposition parties as key explanations, but there is less focus on how politics at the local level contributes to opposition victories. This article argues that effective service delivery in local government helps opposition parties grow support in local elections. Examining the case of the Democratic Alliance (DA) in South Africa, this article provides a systematic analysis of local elections and opposition party performance. Using an original data set of electoral, census and spatial data at the lowest electoral unit in South Africa (the ward), this article shows that in the areas where it is the incumbent party, support for the DA grows as the delivery of basic services to non-white households improves, and when DA-run wards outperform the neighbouring ones run by the ruling African National Congress party, support for the DA increases in neighbouring wards. Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of how local politics erode dominant party rule.

A Dictator's Gift: Dominant party regimes and health expenditures.

A country's health expenditure significantly improves its population health status. This study aims to examine the determinants of health expenditure in dictatorships. We designed a mixed methods research approach. First, we used panel data from 1995 to 2014 covering 99 countries (n = 1488). Fixed effects regression models were fitted to determine how different types of authoritarianism relate to health expenditure. Second, we chose Ivory Coast to apply the synthetic control methods for a case study. We constructed a synthetic Ivory Coast, combining other dominant party regimes to resemble the values of health expenditure predictors for Ivory Coast prior to a regime change from a dominant party system to personalist dictatorships in 2000. We found that dominant party autocracies, compared with non-dominant party regimes, increased health expenditure (% of GDP) (1.36 percentage point increase, CI = 0.59-2.12). The marginal effect, however, decreased when an autocrat in this type of regime held elections (0.86 percentage point decrease, CI = 0.20-1.52). Furthermore, we found the difference in health expenditure between the actual Ivory Coast and its synthetic version starts to grow following the regime change in 2000 (in 2000, actual: 6.00%, synthetic: 6.04%; in 2001, actual: 4.85%, synthetic: 5.99%), suggesting a pronounced negative effect of the government transition on Ivory Coast health expenditure. The findings suggest that different forms of dictatorship are associated with varying levels of health expenditure. Where dictatorships rely on popular support, as is the case with dominant party dictatorships, health expenditure is generally greater.

Economic Institutions and Autocratic Breakdown: Monetary Constraints and Fiscal Spending in Dominant-Party Regimes

In dominant-party regimes, party cadres’ participation in decision making constrains dictators from arbitrarily changing policy. Dominant-party regimes are also better at mobilizing supporters in e...

Explaining Judicial Authority in Dominant-Party Democracies: The Case of the Constitutional Court of South Africa

Why do authoritative constitutional courts sometimes thrive even in dominant-party regimes? This article identifies as a key determining factor the constitutional entrenchment of wealth redistribution via private corporate equity transfers. Since the policy threatens private capital, the dominant party would want to avoid massive capital flight by credibly committing to a restrained practice of indirect expropriation through an authoritative constitutional court that can apply a brake to the policy when it goes too far. The analysis is based on an in-depth case study of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. The empirical research includes conducting an expert survey on judicial appointments that tests a crucial observable implication of the theory, as well as performing process tracing that involves interviewing South African business elites.

Parallel authoritarian powers: an explanation of Mexico’s authoritarian regime breakdown

ABSTRACTMany scholars suggest that dominant parties enhance authoritarian regime resiliency by regularizing and directing the distribution of spoils, careers, and policy among members of the authoritarian coalition. This article challenges this assertion by providing a novel mechanism to explain why, under stress, some dominant party regimes are more likely to break down than others. The argument posits that an autocracy’s capacity to fend off systemic crises increases when elites who control the power to make decisions locate themselves in the same organization (for example, the military, the bureaucracy, a political party) as elites in charge of implementing these decisions. If elites of these types locate in different organizations (what I refer to as a “parallel power” arrangement), in the face of systemic adversities elite collective action suffers and, consequently, regime resiliency decreases. I illustrate the applicability of the argument in the case of Mexico’s party-based autocracy. The stability of this regime was fatally damaged when, in the presence of systemic challenges in the 1980s and 1990s, the state’s bureaucracy – in charge of making decisions – decided to enact economic and electoral policies against the wishes of the elites in the dominant party, who were in charge of implementing many of these decisions.

A dictator’s gift: dominant party regimes and expenditures for public health

A dictator’s gift: dominant party regimes and expenditures for public health

Loyalty Premiums: Vote Prices and Political Support in a Dominant-Party Regime

Loyalty Premiums: Vote Prices and Political Support in a Dominant-Party Regime

Monetary Constraints, Spending, and Autocratic Survival in Party-Based Regimes

In dominant party regimes, party cadres’ participation in decision-making constrains dictators from arbitrarily changing policy. Party based regimes are also better at mobilizing supporters in exchange for extensive patronage. The conventional wisdom is that these two mechanisms work together to prolong dominant party regimes. However, under certain conditions, the elite-level constraints restrict autocratic leaders’ ability to engage in patronage distribution. We focus on monetary institutions, arguing that when central bank independence overlaps with the collective decision-making in dominant party regimes, dictators have diminished control over the central bank. Thus the central bank is effective enough to restrict expansionary fiscal policy, reducing the mobilization of supporters through patronage and increasing authoritarian breakdown risk. Analyses on data from 1970 to 2012 in 94 autocracies find that high central bank independence in dominant party regimes increases the likelihood of breakdown. Moreover, independent central banks in party-based autocracies contribute to lower fiscal expenditures.

Tools of single party hegemony in Tanzania: evidence from surveys and survey experiments

ABSTRACTPolitical systems dominated by a single party are common in the developing world, including in countries that hold regular elections. Yet we lack knowledge about the strategies by which these regimes maintain political dominance. This article presents evidence from Tanzania, a paradigmatic dominant party regime, to demonstrate how party institutions are used instrumentally to ensure the regime's sustained control. First, I show that the ruling party maintains a large infrastructure of neighbourhood representatives, and that in the presence of these agents, citizens self-censor about their political views. Second, I provide estimates of the frequency with which politicians give goods to voters around elections, demonstrating that such gifts are more common in Tanzania than previous surveys suggest. Third, I use a survey experiment to test respondents’ reaction to information about corruption. Few voters change their preferences upon receipt of this information. Taken together, this article provides a detailed picture of ruling party activities at the micro-level in Tanzania. Citizens conceal opposition sympathies from ten cell leaders, either because they fear punishment or seek benefits. These party agents can monitor citizens’ political views, facilitating clientelist exchange. Finally, citizens’ relative insensitivity to clientelism helps explain why politicians are not punished for these strategies.

Dominant party cohesion in comparative perspective: evidence from South Africa and Namibia

ABSTRACTAfrica's proliferation of dominant-party regimes is often regarded as an obstacle to democratization. Scholars and practitioners therefore face the task of understanding how and why constitutionally legitimate challenges to dominant party rule occur. This article asks: why do some presidential succession crises act as a catalyst to dominant party fragmentation when others do not? It argues that minority factions are more likely to defect from a dominant party when they have (1) been marginalized by the majority faction and (2) confidence in their mobilizational capacity. Factional purging is in turn traced to autocratic leadership and party under-bureaucratization, whilst high levels of factional self-confidence are linked to crises of dominance and the weakness of extant opposition parties.

It’s Domestic Politics, Stupid! EU Democracy Promotion Strategies Meet African Dominant Party Regimes

Summary Dominant party systems trigger controversy about how the EU should engage with them. The examples of Ethiopia and Rwanda show that the willingness of authoritarian governments to engage with the EU on democratic reforms varies widely. The paper argues that the type of challenge to regime survival that authoritarian governments face affects both their coercive strategies and their openness to engaging with the EU, giving the EU different entry points to support reforms. Yet, due to EU domestic factors and difficulties with ‘reading’ authoritarian regimes’ logic of political survival, the EU has problems making use of this dynamic.