Electoral Authoritarian Regimes Research Articles

The Perils of Authoritarian Presidentialism: Stumbling Towards Authoritarian Constitutionalism in Eurasia

Hegemonic electoral authoritarian regimes in post-Soviet Eurasia have been increasingly experimenting at the margins with alternative institutional forms beyond inherited democratic structures, yet so far with only minor success. Tinkering with different constitutional formats is likely to continue in the coming decades, especially as the constitutional position of representative legislatures ensures that such electorally-connected remain uncomfortable, latent threats to long-term authoritarian stability. Efforts to structurally deviate from the ‘standard model’ of liberal democratic constitutional schemas derived from the 1990s-era democratization pressures has already been observed in several states, including Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. More ambitious structural format changes are likely, especially in the form of newly constitutionalized conciliar and advisory bodies, which are also increasingly associated with the institutionalization of stable leader succession rules. Combined with formally disempowering elected legislatures vis-a-vis the executive, these new developments may prove to be more congruent with long-standing electoral authoritarian regimes’ preferences regarding the formalization of authoritarian political orders over the medium- and long-term.

Political Participation and the Survival of Electoral Authoritarian Regimes

Political Participation and the Survival of Electoral Authoritarian Regimes

Osäkerhetens politik i praktiken: Presidentvalet 2020 som förändrade Belarus

Abstract: ‘The Politics of Uncertainty’ in Practice: The 2020 Presidential Election that Changed BelarusUp until 2020 Aleksandr Lukashenka’s authoritarian regime had ruled Belarus for 26 years without major challenges. Thus, the popular mobilization that took shape in connection with the August 2020 presidential election came as a surprise. It was not the first time that elections in Belarus were not fair – but it was the first time that large sectors of the population reacted openly. Six months later, Belarusians all over the country were still contesting the falsified results. What contributed to this mobilization and politicization of a previously largely apolitical society? Why does that development represent such a serious threat to the authoritarian system? This study sees the Belarusian presidential election and its aftermath as illustrating the ‘politics of uncertainty’ of electoral authoritarian regimes. Because of the intrinsic insecurity of authoritarian systems, all regular elections in that context entail risks, which in theory might lead to change. In Belarus, the emergence of latent threats to the regime’s legitimacy in the form of social cleavages and an economic crisis, combined with the fundamental dynamics of the ‘election game’, amplified this instability. The election served as the starting point for a process of transformation that became the most serious threat ever faced by the Lukashenka regime.

Staying Out of Trouble: Criminal Cases Against Russian Mayors

Although repression against elites is a common occurrence in authoritarian regimes, we know little about which elites are targeted. This paper uses an original dataset on the prosecution of mayors in large Russian cities to examine the factors that make elites more likely to be arrested. We argue that in electoral authoritarian regimes like Russia, regime leaders are reluctant to arrest popular ocials. Such ocials command political capital that is useful to the regime, and arrests of prominent ocials can produce popular backlash. We examine this argument using an original dataset on all arrests of municipal leaders in Russia's 221 largest cities between 2002 and 2018. We nd that mayors who won their elections by large margins are less likely to be arrested. In addition, we document several other substantively important patterns: 1) a mayor's professional background is not related to the likelihood of arrest, 2) opposition mayors are four times more likely to be arrested, and 3) mobilization of votes for the regime is not protective against arrest.

Authoritarian Roads Not Taken: Institutional Trajectories and Authoritarian Constitutionalism in Interwar Eastern Europe

Contemporary authoritarian regimes are more alike than they have been in decades, with most conforming to a constitutional structure that imitates liberal democracies, although many seek to innovate beyond this framework. This paper explores a prior era of authoritarian constitutional innovation, the twenty years of postwar independence among the states of Interwar Eastern Europe. This paper attempts a systematic conceptual categorization among Interwar-era authoritarian regimes in the Baltic states, East-Central Europe, and the Balkans over the period 1919-1939, identifying models akin to modern electoral authoritarianism as well as more unusual schemas conceptualized here as ‘authoritarian constitutionalism.’ Instead of asking why Eastern European states fell away from democracy during the interbellum, this paper asks what forms of authoritarianism took hold in a period when authoritarian institutional creativity was at an historic high. Leveraging data on regime, political system, and institutional configurations across all Eastern European authoritarian regimes, the paper groups institutional patterns and tracks their evolution over the Interwar era, introducing the concept of ‘authoritarian constitutionalism,’ a form of institutionalized authoritarian rule often left as a residual category or marked by ideological signifiers, to better explain the congruence of political and constitutional order across regional cases. Dynamics of authoritarian institutional experimentation are further illustrated with vignette case studies of the electoral authoritarian regime in Poland and the authoritarian constitutionalist regime of Konstantin Pats’ Estonia.

One Strike and You’re out…Dictators’ Fate in the Aftermath of Terrorism

ABSTRACT We use a cross-country dataset on terrorism and leadership survival from 1970 through 2015 to shed light on a leader’s fate after terrorists’ strike. We provide robust evidence that incumbents in electoral authoritarian regimes face an increased hazard of exit from political power. This is contrasted with the closed authoritarian dictators that remain intact. Moreover, we fail to find a robust effect of terrorism on a leader’s survival probability in democracies. We conceive this effect to be due to the collapse of the elite coalition in autocracies after an attack, suggesting that the dictator’s ‘loyal friends’ betray him in the aftermath of terrorism.

Subnational Turnover, Accountability Politics, and Electoral Authoritarian Survival: Evidence from Museveni's Uganda

Most non-democratic regimes engineer elections such that regime change is effectively impossible via the ballot. However, many of these elections see high turnover of politicians at the subnational level, often through competitive processes that occur within ruling parties. This is the case for President Yoweri Museveni's dominant National Resistance Movement (NRM) in Uganda, the ranks of which have been decimated by intra-party competition at each election throughout its three decades in power. This competition includes high levels of voter participation in mass primaries and general elections and is particularly acute in the rural southern areas where Museveni's simultaneous presidential candidacy draws most support. Based on qualitative data from the 2016 elections, this article investigates the relationship between this local, intra-party competition and Museveni's survival, building a theory that local competition in electoral authoritarian regimes can provide an outlet for accountability politics by redirecting widespread voter frustrations away from a regime and towards expendable local politicians.

Научно-экспертное сообщество и власть: специфика и модели взаимодействия (на примере регионов СФО)

The present research featured the problems of interaction between scientific community and the local authorities in five regions of the Federal Siberian district: Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, and Tomsk regions, the Altai Territory, and the Republic of Tuva. The research objective was to identify and describe the dominant model of interaction between the scientific community and the authorities in Siberia. The study was based on the method of semi-structured expert interviews, which involved 34 scientists. The authors identified the level of subjectivity of regional scientific communities as groups of experts in the process of making political and state decisions. They also described the models and specifics in building interaction between scientists and the local authorities. The article introduces the main challenges to the process of building up an effective and collaborative relationship, namely the prevailing electoral-authoritarian regime and a weak expert function of the scientific community. The interaction was mostly represented by an informal (non-institutionalized) model with a poor involvement of expert community.

Bureaucratic discrimination in electoral authoritarian regimes: Experimental evidence from Russia

Are investors in electoral authoritarian regimes discriminated against for political activism? In this paper, we implement a simple experiment to test whether affiliation with the ruling party or the political opposition affects the probability that investors receive advice from investment promotion agencies in Russian regions. Between December 2016 and June 2017, we sent 1504 emails with a short question and a number of randomized treatments to 188 investment promotion agencies in 70 Russian regions. Although investment promotion agencies are nominally depoliticized in Russia, we find that switching the political affiliation of a potential investor from the opposition party “Yabloko” to the government party “United Russia” on average increases the chances to receive a reply by 30%. The effect strongly depends on regional levels of political competition, with higher levels of discrimination in regions that are less politically competitive.

When Does Diffusing Protest Lead to Local Organization Building? Evidence from a Comparative Subnational Study of Russia’s “For Fair Elections” Movement

Under what conditions do nation-wide mass protests in authoritarian regimes produce new local activist organizations? Based on sixty-five interviews and over 1,000 media reports, internal documents, and social media posts, I compare the organization-building process in the “For Fair Elections” (FFE) protests of 2011–2012 across four Russian regions. I argue that mass protests are more likely to leave behind new social movement organizations (SMOs) when the local and the national interact, i.e., when long-standing activists on the ground perceive an opportunity to use the protests for their ongoing local struggles. Where new SMOs are established, their composition, activity pattern, and inner structure follow the tactical and organizational repertoires of veteran activists that were shaped by their local political environments. This argument illuminates the functioning of electoral authoritarian regimes from a subnational perspective and identifies conditions under which a bottom-up challenge to an authoritarian political system can drive local civil society development.

Repeated Multiparty Elections in Cambodia: Intensifying Authoritarianism Yet Benefiting the Masses

The United Nations (UN) introduced multiparty elections to Cambodia in 1993 in the hope of bringing about democracy in that country. Ironically, the two-and-a-half decades of uninterrupted elections have led to an ever-more authoritarian government under Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Cambodian People's Party (CPP). Authoritarianism under the single-dominant party system began in 1997, but has intensified since 2017 with the ban on the leading opposition party. While concurring that repetitive elections have consolidated authoritarianism, this paper argues that elections are not merely tools that authoritarian leaders deploy to hold on to power. Elections are arguably mechanisms that have compelled the CPP to offer several extraordinary economic concessions since 2013; this is the first argument of the paper. The developments have created a win-win scenario for the rulers and the ruled—the authoritarian leaders prolong their rule, and the masses have more disposable income, among various benefits. The second argument is that such policy concessions are made only when the ruling party senses critical challenges from the opposition and voters. This paper contributes to the literature arguing that multiparty elections in electoral authoritarian regimes extract economic policy concessions.

Social Policy on Social Media: How Opposition Actors Used Twitter and VKontakte to Oppose the Russian Pension Reform

ABSTRACT How do opposition actors in electoral authoritarian regimes use social media to galvanize support? Based on 2,229 social media posts, I examine how Aleksey Navalny and the Communist Party (KPRF) politicize grievances about the pension reform of 2018 and use Twitter and VKontakte for protest mobilization. I find that Navalny integrates the reform in his narrative of government corruption and theft, strategically using the platforms’ different advantages. The KPRF frames less coherently and makes no distinction between VKontakte and Twitter. These differences, I argue, are mainly due to actors’ different target audiences and their respective position in the authoritarian political system

Electoral Performance and Mobilization of Opposition Parties in Russia

Abstract This paper documents the patterns of opposition parties’ engagement with street politics in Russia. It claims that in the electoral authoritarian regimes like Russia under Vladimir Putin, public protests remain a viable instrument for reaching out to the constituencies and eliciting concessions from the regime. In addition, collective actions signal commitment and strength and help to overcome the media blockade usually imposed by the state. However, in order to be a successful player in contentious politics, parties have to develop organizational capacity. Using the data on more than 7000 protest events that took place in Russia in 2012–2015, I show that the regional party branches with higher electoral returns in federal and regional elections organize more protest events controlling for other possible determinants of mobilization. The Communist Party remains the major mobilizing force covering a large array of issues and demands. However, the loyal opposition—LDPR and Just Russia—and the liberal parties like Yabloko and People’s Freedom Party also consistently stage the public protests with their electoral performance on the regional level being associated with the level of their protest activity. Overall, the study shows that the organizational capacity of the opposition is necessary though insufficient condition for the parties to engage with street politics.

Nicaragua: De-democratization and Regime Crisis

ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to analyze three key issues in current Nicaraguan politics and in the political debate surrounding hybrid regimes: de-democratization, political protest, and the fall of presidencies. First, it analyzes the process of de-democratization that has been taking place in Nicaragua since 2000. It shows that the 2008 elections were not competitive but characteristic of an electoral authoritarian regime. Second, it reflects on the kind of regime created in Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega’s mandate, focusing on the system’s inability to process any kind of protest and dissent. Third, it examines the extent to which the protests that broke out in April 2018 may predict the early end to Ortega’s presidency, or whether Nicaragua’s political crisis may lead to negotiations between the government and the opposition.

How clientelism varies: comparing patronage democracies

ABSTRACTClientelistic vote mobilization is a prominent electoral strategy in many of the world’s democracies and electoral authoritarian regimes. Yet the comparative study of this practice, which involves exchanging personal favours for electoral support, remains strikingly underdeveloped. This special issue makes the case that clientelistic politics takes different forms in different countries, and that this variation matters for understanding democracy, elections, and governance. By comparing clientelistic vote mobilization in several countries – Mexico, Ghana, Sudan to Turkey, Indonesia, the Philippines, Caribbean and Pacific Islands states, and Malaysia – we unpack the concept of political clientelism and show that it is possible to identify different types of patronage democracies. In this introductory essay, we develop a comparative framework for this endeavour, showing that clientelism can be fruitfully compared in terms of the character of the networks that facilitate clientelistic exchange, the benefits that politicians offer in exchange for votes, and the degree to which politicians, and especially parties, control the distribution of state resources. These comparisons lead to the identification of different types of patronage democracies, notably community-centred and party-centred varieties. Building on this framework, this special issue shows that the comparative study of clientelistic politics offers analytical promise for scholars of democracy and democratization.

How democratization benefits brokers: a comparison of Mexico City and Khartoum

ABSTRACTHow does urban brokerage differ in patronage democracies and electoral authoritarian regimes? This article answers this question by providing in-depth comparison of Mexico City and Khartoum, two cities in which electoral competitiveness differs starkly. In both cities, brokers play fundamentally similar functions connecting residents and the state, and mobilizing similar abilities to deliver services for the urban poor. But there is one fundamental difference: brokered relationships between the state and poor people are competitive in Mexico City, whereas in Khartoum they are not. Due to the democratic opening that has unfolded in Mexico since the early 2000s, there are now multiple avenues through which brokers can access state resources. These multiple avenues, and the political competition over the resources they provide, produces multipolar brokerage: brokers can choose between different political patrons and play them off against each other. In electoral authoritarian Khartoum, by contrast, brokerage patterns are unipolar: all avenues lead to a single power source – the ruling party. In comparing urban politics in the two settings, the article concludes that democratization has strengthened brokers in Mexico City, providing them with greater bargaining power and the ability to threaten to take their clienteles to rival patrons.

Institutionalising electoral uncertainty and authoritarian regime survival.

Authoritarian incumbents routinely use democratic emulation as a strategy to extend their tenure in power. Yet, there is also evidence that multiparty competition makes electoral authoritarianism more vulnerable to failure. Proceeding from the assumption that the outcomes of authoritarian electoral openings are inherently uncertain, it is argued in this article that the institutionalisation of elections determines whether electoral authoritarianism promotes stability or vulnerability. By ‘institutionalisation’, it is meant the ability of authoritarian regimes to reduce uncertainty over outcomes as they regularly hold multiparty elections. Using discrete‐time event‐history models for competing risks, the effects of sequences of multiparty elections on patterns of regime survival and failure in 262 authoritarian regimes from 1946 to 2010 are assessed, conditioned on their degree of competitiveness. The findings suggest that the institutionalisation of electoral uncertainty enhances authoritarian regime survival. However, for competitive electoral authoritarian regimes this entails substantial risk. The first three elections substantially increase the probability of democratisation, with the danger subsequently diminishing. This suggests that convoking multiparty competition is a risky game with potentially high rewards for autocrats who manage to institutionalise elections. Yet, only a small number of authoritarian regimes survive as competitive beyond the first few elections, suggesting that truly competitive authoritarianism is hard to institutionalise. The study thus finds that the question of whether elections are dangerous or stabilising for authoritarianism is dependent on differences between the ability of competitive and hegemonic forms of electoral authoritarianism to reduce electoral uncertainty.

Mind the Electoral Gap: the Effect of Investment in Public Infrastructure on Authoritarian Support in South Korea

This study examines the effect of investment in transportation infrastructure on regime support in an electoral authoritarian regime. Using a difference-in-difference analysis of neighborhood-level panel data on a subway system from 1971–1985 in urban South Korea, we find that incumbent vote share increased in neighborhoods surrounding the newly constructed subway stations. We show that subway construction was effective at boosting regime support, especially in neighborhoods where people are more likely to read about the government propaganda of subway construction from newspapers. We also provide anecdotal evidence of private economic gains contributing to the increased support for the ruling party. The results suggest that investment in welfare-enhancing goods and services such as public transportation may help autocrats of developing countries to retain political power by increasing electoral support for their ruling parties.

Protest in electoral autocracies: a new dataset

ABSTRACTA growing literature explores the causes and consequences of dramatic political protests in autocracies. Yet, we know comparatively little about other forms of protests in these regimes. The Lankina Russian Protest-Event Dataset (LAruPED) facilitates the investigation of protest in Russia, a classic example of an electoral authoritarian regime. The data, which are human-coded, identify, in wave one, protests across Russia from March 2007 until 2016. Unlike other datasets, which focus on political protests, LAruPED covers a wide range of social and economic protests and imposes no limitations on the minimum number of protesters involved in events as a prerequisite for inclusion in the dataset. We introduce LAruPED and discuss how it differs from other data. We also present examples from work that leverages the dataset to show how the data could be used to explore questions of authoritarian politics, highlighting variation in the type of suppressed protests in electoral autocracies.

When the party’s over: political blame attribution under an electoral authoritarian regime

ABSTRACTWhich reaction takes the upper hand: a “rally around the flag,” born of geopolitical success, or grievance over economic misfortune? By means of a survey experiment, we aim to explore the mechanisms of blame and credit when a rally around the flag coincides with a major economic downturn, and we estimate the effects of the Crimean events and the economic crisis on how Russians assess the performance of federal political institutions. Our findings suggest that economic hardships are attributed exclusively to the government and the State Duma, while it is only the president who benefits from the rally around the flag. Moreover, the president receives an additional benefit when the “patriotic unity” priming meets the “economic hardship” priming, thereby resulting in a double rally around the flag effect. This suggests that the president stands apart from state institutions when responsibility is assigned, and he is the only one to enjoy national consolidation around him, which is further reinforced by poor economic conditions. Spotlighting the president increases his popularity and consequently increases the costs of political divides, while the legislature and the government can be exploited as scapegoats for policy failures.