Electoral Authoritarianism Research Articles

Payoffs, Parties, or Policies: “Money Politics” and Electoral Authoritarian Resilience

ABSTRACTA key part of what sustains electoral authoritarianism over the long term is genuine popular support. Dominant parties, particularly in a developmental context (the primary setting for such regimes), and especially where elections are more than minimally meaningful, curry performance legitimacy and loyalty not just through skewed rules and coercion, but through material incentives: “money politics.” If challengers can find a way to de-emphasize support based on material inducements, they stand a chance of securing gains via elections, rather than relying on economic downturns to shrink patronage coffers. Drawing on extensive original ethnographic and survey data from electoral-authoritarian Malaysia, I explore campaign finance and distributions on both sides in the latest, most regime-threatening general election, which was held on May 5, 2013. Evidence suggests that it was by disentangling clientelist networks from the patronage they so often serve to disseminate, allowing a focus on more programmatic than particularistic appeals, that the opposition Pakatan Rakyat alliance so nearly bested the long-dominant Barisan Nasional regime. Persona – being known and seen among the electorate – still matters as much as before, but relies less consistently than in the past on targeted patronage as a premise for loyalty.

Opportunities and Constraints of Authoritarian Modernisation: Russian Policy Reforms in the 2000s

The essay explores why some socio-economic reforms are successful and others are not and why and how the political regime and its institutions affect policy outcomes and the implementation of a ‘narrow’ programme of authoritarian modernisation, characterised by the achievement of socio-economic growth without full-scale democratisation. It reconsiders the Russian experience of policy reforms in the 2000s as a case of authoritarian modernisation in the context of post-Communist policy changes where less than half of the proposals have been implemented, and only a few have been successful. The essay attempts to explain the factors and mechanisms of the successes and failures of policy reforms, focusing on the one hand, on the impact of electoral authoritarianism and the poor quality of the state on opportunities and constraints for policy changes, and, on the other hand, on the institutional factors which affect the vertical and horizontal fragmentation of the Russian government and the efficiency or inefficiency of its policies.

Russia and the Vulnerability of Electoral Authoritarianism?

AbstractThe notion of electoral authoritarianism emerged in the post-cold war world to refer to authoritarian systems that used seemingly democratic electoral means to stabilize non-democratic systems. This was achieved through the production of massive electoral majorities for the ruling party. However an element of uncertainty remains with such elections in that the ruling party may be either defeated or suffer a significant electoral rebuff. Such events are usually seen in terms of the loss of voter support for the party, but as the Russian case shows, this may be better seen as evidence of a basic malfunction of the electoral authoritarian mechanism itself.

Signaling and Information Acquisition in Authoritarian Institutions: Theory and Evidence from Russian Parliamentary Elections

What role do elections play in non-democracies? We propose a statistical test that can distinguish between two major theories of authoritarian elections: that elections can be used to maintain an image of invincibility of the regime (Signaling Theory), or that elections can be used to get information about the popularity of the regime (Information Acquisition Theory). While those theories might not be mutually exclusive, we show formally that they generate different prediction about the spatial allocation of electoral manipulation. Under Signaling Theory, electoral manipulation happens in the areas where the regime is not popular. Under Information Acquisition theory, electoral manipulation should happen only in the places where the regime is popular. Using the data from 2007 and 2011 Parliamentary elections in Russia, we find that electoral manipulation was more likely to happen in the regions where the level of support for the regime is lower. Decrease in one standard deviation of regime popularity is associated with the increase in the estimates of electoral manipulation by 0.2 standard deviation, thus corroborating Signaling Theory. Our estimations are robust to an array of proxies for electoral manipulation. We also confirm that the results are unlikely to be spurious using instrumental variables and placebo tests.

Electoral Mobilization and Authoritarian Elections: Evidence from Post-Soviet Russia

Despite extensive research on electoral turnout in developed democracies, we know relatively little about the determinants of electoral participation in (electoral) autocracies. Yet, electoral mobilization is crucial to understanding electoral authoritarian regime dynamics and democratic regression. This article studies the ‘socioeconomic roots’ of electoral authoritarianism by using original local-level data from a prominent contemporary electoral authoritarian regime, Russia. The article shows how the electoral mobilization of certain institutionally and socioeconomically state-dependent demographic sectors was a key part in Russia’s transition from a competitive to hegemonic authoritarian regime between 2000 and 2004. An original local-level data set allows us to test the hypotheses using multilevel models, controlling for several socioeconomic and contextual variables at both regional and local levels. The results support the hypotheses of electoral mobilization in specific demographic areas and show interesting variations in turnout patterns between the subnational units.

Political Orientation, Information and Perceptions of Election Fraud: Evidence from Russia

Citizen perceptions of the extent of fraud in a given authoritarian election can differ widely. This article builds on the literature on information acquisition and processing in democracies to argue that much of this variation is due to the way in which citizens’ underlying political orientations affect both the kind of information they gather and how they process that information. These differences in information acquisition and processing have important implications for how election monitoring reports, access to the internet and other sources of information are likely to affect the stability of contemporary authoritarian regimes. The theory is tested using observational data and a survey experiment from the Russian presidential election of 2012.

From Single-Party to Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: The Institutional Origins of Competitiveness in Post-Cold War Africa

From Single-Party to Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: The Institutional Origins of Competitiveness in Post-Cold War Africa

Keep Silent and Make a Big Fortune: How Appearances in Partially Free Media Affect an Authoritarian Intra-Elite Election

An emerging literature points to partially free media as an important channel for authoritarian elites to gather information from below. We argue that such media might also help identify potential threats from within. Motivated by profit and newsworthiness, media with less state control tend to cover politicians with characters that would interest the audience. Those characters often stem from activities that challenge the implicit norms of the regime, and therefore might be perceived as threats to the power sharing status quo. We corroborate this argument with evidence from the Chinese Communist Party’s most recent intra-party election in 2012. Applying Bayesian partial rank likelihood models, we find candidates that appeared more frequently in various partially free media received fewer votes from the party congress delegates. This pattern is robust after accounting for a series of alternative explanations, and after we re-test the same models using data from the previous 2007 election.

Electoral Authoritarianism and Human Development

Do autocratic institutions matter for the welfare of average citizens? Despite the large literature comparing democracies and autocracies, we know little about how human development outcomes differ among autocratic types. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this article argues that contested autocratic elections promote human development by improving state accountability and capacity. Using an instrumental variables setup, I show that the presence and history of multiparty autocratic elections predict significantly better outcomes on health, education, gender equality, and basic freedoms relative to non-electoral autocracy. In fact, the effects on health and education are as strong as the effects of democracy. In contrast, legislatures and parties without multiparty elections produce slightly negative outcomes because these institutions chiefly concern elite cooptation. The results have major implications for the study of autocracy, the political economy of development, and the welfare effects of international election promotion.

Elections and Political Regimes

Post-Cold War autocracies appear novel in their use of multiparty elections, attracting the attention of scholars and policymakers alike. A longer historical view, however, reveals that what is unique is not electoral authoritarianism after 1989, but rather the electoral inactivity of autocracies during the Cold War period. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, authoritarian regimes have held multiparty elections. The prevalence of these elections begs the question of whether they have any effects on political liberalization and democratization. But the study of authoritarian elections in processes of political change faces a number of theoretical and empirical challenges that can only partly be surmounted with existing approaches.

Do spoilers make a difference? Instrumental manipulation of political parties in an electoral authoritarian regime, the case of Russia

Political parties or candidates that participate in elections with the primary aim of splitting the vote for other parties or candidates are conventionally referred to as “spoilers”. In electoral authoritarian regimes, this strategy can be used for maintaining political monopoly. This study identifies institutional and political preconditions for instrumental manipulation of political parties under electoral authoritarianism and empirically examines the efficacy of this strategy during regional legislative elections in Russia from 2012 to 2014. The analysis demonstrates that the use of spoiler parties in Russia brings only modest results due to the lack of strong ideological identifications in the electorate.

The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism

The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism

Elite Management in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: A View From Bashkortostan and Tatarstan

Contributing to the literature on authoritarian elite management, this study explores a puzzle concerned with the elite evolution in Russia’s two ethnic republics, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. The variation of political legacies left by these two republics’ first presidents cannot be addressed using mainstream explanations that are usually considered principal for the Kremlin’s decisionmaking on gubernatorial cadres in Russia. Both Rakhimov and Shaimiev were very successful as political bosses who could effectively deliver electoral votes to the Kremlin and maintain relative social and economic stability within their republics. Yet, toward the end of their political careers, they faced different degrees of freedom in their negotiations with federal elites and had varying degrees of success in ensuring political and economic continuity within their republics. The study instead focuses on the legacies of republican privatization and the institutional dynamics of patronal presidentialism as two alternative explanations for their divergent political outcomes.

Variation in subnational electoral authoritarianism: evidence from the Russian Federation

Despite the burgeoning comparative literature on electoral authoritarian regimes, fewer studies have accounted for the emergence of hegemonic and competitive authoritarian regimes at the subnational level. This article examines the variation in subnational electoral authoritarianism with data from the Russian Federation. First, the article shows that by using a comparative regime classification most Russian subnational cases can be classified as electoral authoritarian between 1991 and 2005. Yet, there are considerable differences in competitiveness between the electoral authoritarian regimes. The article accounts for this variation by drawing on both comparative electoral authoritarianism literature as well as more context-specific explanations. Statistical analysis on 192 subnational electoral authoritarian cases shows that the determinants of Russian subnational authoritarian stability are rather similar to those found in cross-national studies. Subnational (non)competitiveness in Russia appears to be related to the structure of the regional economy and natural resource rents, and to a lesser degree to the specific Russian federal context. Authoritarian “know how” also plays a role in authoritarian regime building. The findings of the article contribute to the literature on electoral authoritarianism, subnational democratization and Russian subnational politics.

Federalism, gubernatorial power and the incorporation of subnational authoritarianism in Russia: A theory-testing empirical inquiry

This article investigates the complex relationship between federalism and electoral authoritarianism by making an empirical inquiry into the structure of incentives that shaped the reform of Russia’s regional election laws in 2004–2009. The idea behind the reform was to make the incumbent governors more manageable and more dependent on the federal authorities. However, the process of its practical implementation largely coincided with Russia’s transition to electoral authoritarianism, as a result of which this original intention was reversed by endowing regional authorities with an unrestricted effective power to determine the course of the reform. The main hypothesis of this study is that bounded only by the reform framework, the governors exerted their influence to maximize one of their main assets, the loyalty of the regional assembles. In order to substantiate this hypothesis empirically, a model formalizing the governors’ optimization problem is constructed, its possible implications are discussed and their statistical support is examined. The results obtained support the theory according to which electoral authoritarianism, rather than simply suppressing the autonomy of most powerful subnational actors, incorporates them by expanding their effective control over the regional political arenas. The previously existing federal arrangements are instrumental in pursuing this goal.

The 2013 General Elections of Cambodia: A Challenge to the Electoral Authoritarianism

The 2013 General Elections of Cambodia: A Challenge to the Electoral Authoritarianism

Observing Incumbent Abuses: Improving Measures of Competitive and Electoral Authoritarianism with New Data

Electoral and competitive authoritarian regimes have become a major focus of comparative research. Yet finding measures that distinguish these regimes from democracies is challenging, especially for scholars conducting large-n cross-national research, as this conceptual distinction rests on incumbent abuses that are difficult to systematically observe. This article reviews common measures that simply utilize extant regime indicators to draw the line with democracy, demonstrates their poor performance in mirroring a benchmark from case-based measurement, and illustrates the adverse implications for theory building. The article then shows how data on incumbent abuse from the National Elections Across Democracy and Dictatorship (NELDA) and Varieties of Democracy (VDEM) projects can be utilized to construct alternative measures. A NELDA-based measure far outperforms extant alternatives in mirroring the case-based benchmark. The article also shows why VDEM might be a superior option once data is available and discusses the major operational choices involved in constructing a measure.

Beyond Electoral Authoritarianism in Transitional Myanmar

This article reassesses notions of ‘electoral authoritarianism’ as applied to the changed political terrain in Myanmar. It examines the various mechanisms through which the lingering influences of earlier political contestation are being integrated into transitional Myanmar’s public and social life. While the evolving Myanmar system is inevitably informed by the dictatorial experience there is a new effort to embrace counter-currents in the shift away from long-term military rule. The argument is that the transitional system mobilises key elements and personnel from the dictatorial period alongside growing opportunities for those who most actively opposed the military dictatorship, including in the pivotal 1988 period. The paradox of political culture under these arrangements means that the notion of a stable electorally authoritarian model needs careful reappraisal. Such stability has been replaced by an appreciation that incremental liberalisation and gradually increasing participation can help to change an entrenched political order. The efforts of the transitional government (2011 to 2015) to implement changes to the economy, the political system and the wider social situation have ensured that creeping reform has become the new norm in a post-authoritarian system where compromise had previously been hard to find.

Electoral Authoritarianism and Russian Case

Electoral Authoritarianism and Russian Case

Black knights and elections in authoritarian regimes: Why and how Russia supports authoritarian incumbents in post‐Soviet states

AbstractIn the last decade, studies have documented how autocrats use elections as a way of legitimising and stabilising their regimes. Simultaneously, a literature on negative external actors (also known as ‘black knights’) has developed, emphasising how various international actors use anti‐democracy promotion strategies to undergird authoritarian regimes. In this article, these two literatures are fused in an attempt to shed light on the external dimension of authoritarian elections and what is termed ‘black knight election bolstering’. First, five mechanisms are elucidated, through which external assistance increases the chances of ‘winning’ elections in authoritarian settings (signaling invincibility, deterring elite defection, undermining opposition activities, dealing with popular protests, and countervailing pressure from foreign democracy promoters). Second, it is argued that external actors are most likely to offer election bolstering when they face a particularly acquiescent partner or when electoral defeat is perceived to lead to radical and undesired regime change. The relevance of both factors is augmented when uncertainty of the electoral outcome is high. Finally, four cases of Russian intervention during elections in three authoritarian neighbour countries (Ukraine in 2004, Belarus in 2006, and Moldova in 2005 and 2009) are analysed. The case studies corroborate the theoretical arguments: not only does Russia engage in all five types of black knight election bolstering, but it does so only when one or more of the three explanatory factors are present.