Fragmented Opposition Research Articles

Historical consciousness and the consolidation of the opposition: uses of the history of revolution and dissent in Russian protest art, 2008–2012

ABSTRACT The protests against election fraud in Russia in winter 2011–2012 were the first in the post-Soviet period that were attended by a united opposition, and attracted hundreds of thousands of previously apolitical citizens. This article seeks to explain mass participation in the protests by focusing on uses of the history of revolution and dissent in Russian protest art. The article investigates whether a common historical consciousness, which could have made it possible to unify previously fragmented opposition and mobilize previously apolitical citizens, was manifested in protest artworks created by artists with differing political ideologies. The conclusion is that the official historical narrative promoted by the state – of a spiritual unity between a strong state and the people – was challenged and undermined by protest artists, who have characterized Russian history as a continuous struggle between an oppressive state and civil society. This finding indicates that a common historical consciousness was manifested in protest artworks.

Youth and protest: how “#Gambia” ended decades of autocratic rule

ABSTRACT This study examines the unexpected collapse of the authoritarian regime in The Gambia following a peaceful election after twenty-two years in power. The study rejects the conventional view that African authoritarian leaders are unremovable through protests and the peaceful electoral process. Drawing on Bunce and Wolchik’s model, this study utilizes semi-structured interviews to explain how youth movements and established opposition parties strategized to decisively impact the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Despite the incumbent’s institutional and procedural advantages, that election “worked” in this context. However, the youths’ ability to encourage the fragmented opposition parties to unite and the youths’ campaign to persuade the electorate to vote against Jammeh contributed to this success. Those efforts are contrasted with previous elections in which Jammeh successfully undermined the free electoral process. No single cause brought about Jammeh’s defeat, but many factors, including the united efforts of older and young people, impacted this outcome.

Opposition fragmentation facilitates electoral accountability: Evidence from a survey experiment

Which is better for electoral accountability: a fragmented opposition that gives plenty of alternatives or an opposition with fewer stronger parties? While oppositions play a key role in democracies, the effect of opposition fragmentation on accountability remains unclear. On the one hand, fragmentation may enhance accountability by providing voters with ideologically close alternatives. On the other hand, increased fragmentation could make coordination over strong viable alternatives more difficult. In this study, I present an original survey experiment designed to test whether fragmentation of the opposition enhances accountability. Moreover, to assess the specific conditions under which fragmentation may enhance accountability, I distinguish between ideologues and pragmatic voters, and differentiate between ideological and valence issues. Results show that opposition fragmentation enhances accountability, particularly for ideologues. Lastly, I present a direct test of the mechanisms that demonstrates that fragmentation improves accountability because marginal gains in ideological proximity outweigh losses in viability.

Democratic Subversion: Elite Cooptation and Opposition Fragmentation

Incumbents in electoral regimes often retain power despite having to regularly compete in multiparty elections. We examine a specific channel through which incumbents can seek to prevent the emergence of a strong opposition that might threaten them in future elections. We present a formal model demonstrating that incumbents can strategically induce opposition fragmentation by appointing some opposition members to ministerial cabinet positions. Opposition politicians who have the opportunity to secure a cabinet position in an incumbent’s government tend to compete for office independently rather than coalescing into broad-based parties or electoral alliances. The model shows that weaker incumbents are more likely to rely on this cooptation strategy. Using original data on presidential elections across African countries during 1990–2016, we show that past cooptation of opposition politicians is associated with a more fragmented opposition field in subsequent elections.

‘David vs Goliath’: The Congo Free State Propaganda War, 1890–1909

The Congo Free State (CFS) propaganda war was an international campaign waged between two distinct groups. On the one side, there were Leopold II, King of the Belgians, his representatives, and his supporters. Opposing Leopold was a disparate international grouping of Congo reformers representing a range of religious, social, and political positions. The propaganda war began with the first public criticism of the CFS government in 1890 and continued until official Belgian annexation in 1908. For the activists to be successful in their campaign, they had to wrestle from Leopold the meaning of the term ‘humanitarian’ and focus public attention on his misrule in the CFS. By analysing key texts produced by reformers, Leopold and his supporters, as well as the response to the propaganda in newspapers and in private letters between the activists, this article will show that Leopold’s press bureau was successful in sowing distrust of the arguments made by humanitarian activists. Additionally, this article will also demonstrate that Leopold’s strategy of sowing discord amongst his already fragmented opposition served to increase distrust in the critics of Leopoldian rule in the Congo.

Keeping power through opposition: party system change in Turkey

AbstractThis paper re-evaluates the party system change in Turkey based on Sartori’s framework. It also explores the role of opposition parties in this. The paper suggests that, while a fragmented opposition may lead to the emergence of a one-party government and/or military intervention because of the high levels of polarization it induces, bilateral opposition prolongs one-party governments. The paper relies on an analysis of party programs and public opinion surveys in order to position the parties in terms of spatial distance and to understand the level of polarization.

Under friendly fire: An experiment on partisan press, fragmented opposition and voting behavior

Statements in which a one-sided partisan media source criticizes a politician aligned with it—friendly fire—are particularly persuasive. This literature assumes a bipartisan context. We argue that when there is a dominant party on one side of the political spectrum with a strong link with a media outlet, voters treat attacks against a co-partisan candidate as friendly fire. But when there is a fragmented opposition, we expect that the strength of the signal conveyed by the friendly fire is diminished. Based on a survey experiment conducted in Argentina, we find the fragmented nature of the opposition changes the dynamic of friendly fire. Only partisan and sophisticated opposition voters treat attacks on opposition candidates as friendly fire. These voters are better able to overcome the lack of clear partisan link with the opposition newspaper and punish their co-partisan candidate.

Triple Duel: The Impact of Coalition Fragmentation and Three-Corner Fights on the 2018 Malaysian Election

Malaysia's previously hegemonic Barisan Nasional (BN) government was unexpectedly defeated in the 2018 general election despite a fragmented opposition and widespread three-corner fights that theory states should inhibit turnover. Why? We argue that the opposition-split hypothesis rests on three core assumptions: third parties split only the anti-incumbent vote; coalition/party support is relatively uniform across the country; and opposition parties are not “elite splits” in disguise. The Malaysian context challenges all three of these assumptions. Counterfactual election simulations ultimately suggest that the opposition split neither dramatically helped nor hurt the BN. While this does not upend conventional wisdom on opposition coordination, it does demonstrate that the theory manifests only when its assumptions accord with local realities. More substantively, our analysis also provides insights into why the new opposition will likely seek to increase the salience of ethno-religious issues in a bid to recapture electoral ground.

Perpetual transitions: The institutionalization of military tutelage systems in Myanmar and Thailand

The Tatmadaw (the Myanmar armed forces) and the Royal Thai Armed Forces (RTAF) are two of the most resilient and enduring politically active militaries in the world, engaging in a decades long process of the institutionalization of a system of military tutelage. There are, however, significant differences in the strategies pursued and the degree of success achieved in each. These variations are due to the combination of three factors creating the environmental context within which they have pursued these projects: (1) the existence of political allies and cohesiveness of the military; (2) degree of unification of domestic opposition elements against them; and (3) international pressures and influences. Based on a Historical Institutionalist perspective, this paper will map the interplay of these factors over time within each case to explain the different pathways these projects have proceeded. With a lack of allies, a fragmented opposition, and various degrees of international pressure the Tatmadaw has been unsuccessful in creating a durable system of tutelage, resulting in lengthy periods of direct rule while attempting wholesale recreations of the state. In Thailand, the RTAF’s alliance with the Monarchy combined with a fragmented but at times united opposition and weak international pressure has resulted in frequent coups to remove elected governments, but usually for short durations resulting in their limited institutionalization into the political system. The current democracy projects in both states, in part due to domestic and international pressures, are not about replacing but rather embedding the military’s involvement in the political system, though their freedom of action has been constrained to a certain extent. Myanmar and Thailand are best characterized as perpetual transitions as an intentional project to maintain a defective-democratic, tutelary system. Defective in that the military maintains the prerogative to involve itself in electoral politics and tutelary in that the military has cordoned off reserve domains of policy which ensure the system, regardless of who is in charge, supports their interests.

Government–opposition relations in a fragmented, personalized, and multidimensional setting: The case of Israel

Patterns of legislative activity in parliamentary regimes have long been defined by political parties and the division between government and opposition. However, several trends in recent years may challenge this distinction by mitigating the electoral connection between parliamentary behavior and electoral competition. Issue multidimensionality, party system fragmentation, and political behavioral personalization, while common to most established democracies, have been extremely pronounced in Israel. Analyzing all legislation votes taken in the Knesset between 2003 and 2014, this article uses the Israeli case to demonstrate how a fragmented opposition and the prevalence of highly personalized, nonpartisan private-member legislation, result in deviation from the familiar government–opposition divide and diminish opposition parties’ vote-seeking behavior in parliamentary votes. As an extreme case of trends that are gaining ground in most established democracies, this case study contributes to the understanding of the effects of general changes to the political system on legislative behavior.

Japan in 2017: Successes and Scandals

Notwithstanding two personal scandals, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo won the October Lower House Election thanks to the North Korean nuclear “threat” and a fragmented political opposition. Both China and Japan now have strong and powerful top leaders in President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Presumably, both have a freer hand to rein in the nationalist elements within their countries and broker deals and compromises. Sino-Japanese relations might well be on the mend.

Malaysia's political challenges

For many Malaysians, the most worrying aspect of recent political scandals and a fragmented opposition has been the evidence of a growing political polarisation along ethnic and religious lines.

Elite-Mass Congruence in African Dominant Party Systems: The Cases of Botswana and Lesotho

This study investigates elite-mass partisan congruence in African dominant party systems. I argue that dominant party systems with stable opposition parties provide more capacity for programmatic issue congruence between voters and their political representatives than dominant party systems with volatile opposition parties. To test this argument I compare Lesotho and Botswana. Both countries feature regular and fairly free elections, which so far resulted in dominant party systems where the same party holds more than 50 percent of the lower house seats in subsequent elections. However, in Botswana, a stable opposition embodied in the Botswana National Front (BNF) confronts the dominant Botswana Democratic Party (BDP). In Lesotho, on the other hand, the dominant Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) faces a fluid and fragmented opposition. Accordingly, I expect to find more congruence on partisan policy preferences between political elites and voters in Botswana than in Lesotho. I measure the extent of elite-mass partisan congruence by combining an original elite dataset and survey data.

Political Competition, Judicial Independence, and Electoral Regime Age

Independent courts that can make governments abide by existing laws are widely believed to be essential for the consolidation of democracy and beneficial to economic development (e.g. Landes and Posner, 1975; North and Weingast, 1989; Linz and Stepan, 1996; Henisz, 2000; Feld and Voigt, 2003; O’Donnell, 2004 etc.). Such institutions are not cost-free, however, as they require incumbent politicians in the executive and the legislative to accept significant constraint on their power in the interest of long-term benefits, such as democratic development and economic growth. Under what circumstances do politicians tolerate or provide an independent judiciary?A large literature attributes the emergence and maintenance of independent courts in competitive regimes to the strategic behavior of judges and politicians in response to robust political competition. The conventional wisdom is that weaker incumbents, who are either currently constrained by a strong opposition or faced with an imminent loss of power, are more likely to institute, tolerate, or simply encounter a judiciary that does not cater overwhelmingly to their interests. Stronger incumbents, on the other hand, who confront a fragmented and/or weak opposition and can reasonably expect to remain in power, are prone to curtailing or disrespecting the independence of the judiciary (e.g. Ferejohn and Shipan, 1990; Spiller and Gely, 1992; Ramseyer, 1994; Magalhaes, 1999; Ginsburg, 2002; Iaryczower, Spiller, and Tommasi, 2002; Epstein, Knight and Shvetsova, 2002; Helmke, 2002; Stephenson, 2003; Hanssen, 2004; Chavez, 2004, etc.). In other words, higher levels of political competition are traditionally expected to be associated with greater judicial independence. Some recent studies, however, have questioned the standard story and have suggested that intense political competition can actually create strategic incentives for weak incumbents to use dependent courts to try to hold on to power and thus lead to lower levels of judicial independence (Popova 2006, 2010, 2012; Rebolledo and Rosenbluth, 2009; Trochev, 2010). This paper provides support for Popova’s (2010, 2012) strategic pressure theory, which posits that intense political competition incentivises politicians in new electoral regimes to curtail the independence of the courts. We also take into consideration the regime context in which politicians decide whether to provide independent courts and judges decide whether to stand up to hostile incumbents. Specifically, we investigate the potential influence of the age of an electoral regime (that is, how long the regime's electoral institutions have been in place) on the relationship between political competition and judicial independence. We assume that as electoral regimes age, the degree of certainty about actors' behaviour and knowledge about how regime institutions structure political interactions increase. We hypothesize that fuller knowledge about past and future behaviour is likely to affect the cost-benefit analysis that produces independent or dependent courts. The empirical analysis confirms our hypothesis and indicates that electoral regime age has a modifying effect on the relationship between political competition and judicial independence. Political competition is found to hamper judicial independence in young electoral regimes, but the negative effect gradually disappears (and the relationship may even be reversed at some point), as electoral regimes mature.

How Party System Fragmentation has Altered Political Opposition in Established Democracies

This article examines the consequences of increased party system fragmentation for oppositions, their respective governments and representation more generally, focusing on 18 established democracies. Two of the findings presented here suggest that there is reason to be concerned about the future of parliamentary representation in established democracies. Firstly, an increasing proportion of votes now go to parties that do not receive a proportionate share of legislative representation, implying that a growing degree of organized opposition is extra-parliamentary. Secondly, the findings show that parliamentary oppositions have generally become more fragmented than their respective governments. This suggests that the composition of governments may not be keeping up with current trends in electoral preferences and, in some cases, that governmental majorities have become smaller and more tenuous. Thus, the overall picture is one of a growing and increasingly fragmented opposition, against a smaller and relatively cohesive government.

Antigovernment Networks in Civil Conflicts: How Network Structures Affect Conflictual Behavior

In this article, we combine a game‐theoretic treatment of public goods provision in networks with a statistical network analysis to show that fragmented opposition network structures lead to an increase in conflictual actions. Current literature concentrates on the dyadic relationship between the government and potential challengers. We shift the focus toward exploring how network structures affect the strategic behavior of political actors. We derive and examine testable hypotheses and use latent space analysis to infer actors’ positions vis‐à‐vis each other in the network. Network structure is examined and used to test our hypotheses with data on conflicts in Thailand from 2001 to 2010. We show the influential role of network structure in generating conflictual behavior.

Egypt: a country on edge

Two years after the uprising that ended the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt remains unsettled. Repeated changes to the rules of its political system have made for a bumpy and contentious transition in which many interested parties – the military, the judiciary, Islamist factions, the fragmented secular opposition, anarchist groups and labour movements – are jostling to impose themselves.

Architects and Planners in the Middle of a Road War

In 1966, an interdisciplinary team led by architect and planners replanned a freeway system of Baltimore to meet “the social, economic, and esthetic needs.” But staying true to their mission, they had to side with the affected residents and clash with their client in the court of public opinions, through behind-the-scenes lobbying, and with sober debates about technical details. They fought the road war on behalf of fragmented freeway opposition groups and bought them valuable time to join together. Some architect–planners violated client–consultant obligations and conducted subversive actions such as leaking information, coaching the highway fighters, and ultimately, making them strong enough to form a powerful antiroad coalition.

The Triumph of Conservative Globalism: The Political Economy of the AKP Era

The Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP), following its third successive electoral victory appears to be far more entrenched than its earlier center-right counterparts in Turkish politics. This article highlights the key political economy fundamentals that have rendered the AKP experience unique within the Turkish context. Accordingly, strong economic performance in context of “regulatory neo-liberalism” helped by a favorable global liquidity environment in the early parts of the decade was a key contributor to the party's continued electoral success. The party also made effective use of a variety of formal and informal redistributive mechanisms, which is referred as “controlled neo-populism” in this article, to enlarge its electoral coalition. Furthermore, the fact that Turkey did not suffer a typical old-style economic crisis in the context of the global turmoil of 2008–2009 was important for the AKP's electoral fortunes. Concomitantly, the AKP government was quite effective in managing the global financial crisis politically and it took advantage of its assertive “new” foreign policy approach. Finally, this study argues that the AKP also benefited from the fragmented opposition.

The Triumph of Conservative Globalism: The Political Economy of the AKP Era

The AKP, following its third successive electoral victory appears to be far more entrenched than its earlier center-right counterparts in Turkish politics. This article highlights key political economy fundamentals that have rendered the AKP experience unique in the Turkish context. Accordingly, strong economic performance in the context of “regulatory neo-liberalism” helped by a favorable global liquidity environment in the early parts of the decade was a key contributor to the party’s continued electoral success. The party also made effective use of a variety of formal and informal redistributive mechanisms, which I call “controlled neo-populism”, to enlarge its electoral coalition. Furthermore, the fact that Turkey did not suffer a typical old-style economic crisis in the context of the global turmoil of 2008-2009 was important for the AKP’s electoral fortunes. Concomitantly, the AKP government was quite effective in managing the global financial crisis politically and it took advantage of its assertive “new” foreign policy approach. Finally, this study argues that the AKP also benefited from the fragmented opposition.