What a Little Democracy Can Do: Comparing Trajectories of Reform in Malaysia and Indonesia

Economic crisis sparked political mobilization in both Malaysia and Indonesia in the late 1990s, but with very different results. Reformism in competitive electoral authoritarian Malaysia took a largely electoral route, yielding marginal, top-down institutional change and the enhancement of democratic norms. The hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime in neighbouring Indonesia, on the other hand, was toppled by a sudden upsurge of grass-roots protest, encouraged by elite factionalism. Changes to Indonesian political institutions and personnel since then have disappointed many reformers, and mounting cynicism endangers the entrenchment of democratic political culture. The article argues that a relatively more democratic system grants more space for autonomous challengers to organize and mobilize over the long term than a less open system does. Specifically, civil society agents in the former may accumulate both social capital and its organizational-level counterpart, coalitional capital, facilitating mobilization. Such a regime, though, is better able to contain or otherwise defuse protest than is a more autocratic variant. The latter is thus more vulnerable to dramatic collapse, despite its fragmented political opposition, and faces serious hurdles in subsequent democratic consolidation.     

Authoritarian backsliding and the concentration of political power

This article introduces the concept of authoritarian backsliding as a class of strategies for the concentration of incumbent political power in hybrid regimes. Such actions include manipulating elections, violating civil liberties, creating an extremely uneven playing field for the opposition, and reducing the institutional constraints on executive power. While often falling short of a full regime change, backsliding can significantly alter the level of political competition in a country and reduce the quality of its political life. This article develops a theoretically-grounded strategy to identify and measure backsliding events since 1989, showing that they have been much more common than is typically appreciated. The article also shows the utility of the concept of backsliding for better understanding regime stability. Using cross-national analysis of backsliding events from 1989–2004, we find that threats such as opposition electoral gains or economic crises in resource-dependent regimes create incentives for authoritarian backsliding.     

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.     

Who wins the most when everybody wins? Predicting candidate performance in an authoritarian election

ABSTRACT

What explains the variation in vote shares received by candidates in single-party authoritarian elections where everybody wins? The scholarly literature has often ignored institutional variations, treated all authoritarian elections as similar, and explained the variation of vote shares as a consequence of clientelism, coercion or electoral fraud. We employ a unique data set for Cuba’s 2013 National Assembly election to show an alternative answer: even in authoritarian regimes, institutional settings shape voters’ behaviour and candidates’ strategies. When the number of candidates on the ballot equals the number of parliamentary seats and yet voters can express some preference among multiple candidates, valence can become a predictor of candidate performance. Voters reward high-quality politicians, but not incumbents or Communist Party members, while candidates have no incentives to actively distinguish themselves and converge toward the general support of the single united slate.     

Strategic ballot removal: an unexplored form of electoral manipulation in hybrid regimes

The literatures on electoral manipulation and rejected ballots have yet to engage one another in a compelling manner. This article provides the theoretical foundations for rejected ballots as electoral manipulation by exploring incidents of suspicious rejected ballot rates and practices around the world with a special focus on Zambia. Not only did the rate of rejected ballots in Zambia double between the 2015 and 2016 presidential elections, but a disproportionate increase was observed in president’s home province. Leveraging an original dataset, the article models a largely unnoticed form of electoral manipulation: the strategic rejection of opposition ballots by biased polling officials. Analysis reveals that more rejected ballots were associated with increased vote shares for the ruling party in the president’s home province, indicating probable electoral manipulation. Raising awareness around this difficult to detect, but likely pervasive, form of manipulation should help to improve electoral quality in hybrid regimes.     

Capture the flag: local factionalism as electoral mobilization in dominant party Uganda

ABSTRACT

This article addresses a question relevant to many non-democratic regimes: how can a successful dominant party be an institutionally weak one? President Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) have dominated Ugandan politics since coming to power in 1986. However, the NRM does not possess many of the institutional endowments that other dominant parties use to control mass and elite politics, such as central control of candidate selection, autonomous mobilizing structures, or dispensation of sufficient political finance to its candidates. Instead, the party secretariat has no real institutional power independent of the personalist Museveni regime, and its local branches house fierce internal competition each election in which most incumbents lose office. This article argues that the NRM mobilizes so well for Museveni despite its institutional deficits due to the precise nature of the competitive process its local elites go through to win its nomination (or “flag”) and the subsequent general election. This process sees self-organized and self-financed candidates and their factions rejuvenate the party and mobilize votes for the concurrent presidential election as a by-product of their competition with one another. The article makes this argument with qualitative data from three districts gathered during the 2016 elections.     

Trials,lustration, and clean elections: the uneven effects of transitional justice mechanisms on electoral manipulation

Transitional justice aims to promote democratization, but previous research has found that it has mixed effects. We address this puzzle by focussing on how transitional justice affects a necessary condition for democracy: clean elections. We test for the effects of four transitional justice mechanisms – truth commissions, lustration policies, amnesties, and trials – on two different types of electoral manipulation, using data from 187 post-transition elections held in 63 countries around the world from 1980 to 2004. We find that post-transition trials limit illegal forms of electoral manipulation, such as vote-buying and falsification of results, but have no effect on legal forms of manipulation. By contrast, lustration policies limit legal manipulation tactics, like intimidation and harassment of opponents by the security services, but do not affect illegal tactics. By showing that different aspects of transitional justice can have varying influence on electoral integrity, this project improves understanding of the mechanisms that link transitional justice and democratization.     

Failure of authoritarian learning: explaining Burma/Myanmar’s electoral system

What explains why some authoritarian governments fail to take all the steps they can to preserve their positions of power during democratic transitions? This article examines this question using the example of the leading pro-military party in Myanmar, which lost badly to the National League for Democracy (NLD) in the transitioning elections of 2015. This article argues that a key to understanding how the military failed to perpetuate its power in the electoral sphere resides in its choice of electoral system. In 2010, the military junta chose an electoral system, first-past-the-post, that was distinctly ill-suited to preserve its power. We explore several hypotheses for why this occurred and ultimately conclude that the military and its allies did not understand electoral systems well enough to act strategically and that they overestimated their support relative to the NLD. This failure of authoritarian learning has important implications for understanding authoritarian politics, democratic transitions, and the challenges faced by authoritarian governments seeking to make such transitions.     

Fighting and voting: Mapping electoral violence in the region of post-Communist Europe

Electoral disputes accompanied by violent outbreaks have become an emerging problem in societies under transformation, in authoritarian regimes, as well as in young democracies. The truth is that many politicians elected to office, their supporters, and political activists have altered their perceptions of electoral competition in a form of zero-sum logic with direct consequences for their opponents. After the fall of Communism in the beginning of the 1990s, Central and Eastern Europe stood at a crossroads. This period of imbalance and uncertainty affected the violent interaction in newly reformed electoral arenas with serious consequences for legitimizing democratic change. Despite the well-documented tension that existed in the region, the importance of violence in the electoral arena is rather neglected. The article approaches this gap as the first attempt to map electoral violence in a new typological environment where the process of transformation has affected political pluralism and the patterns of political contest. It argues that electoral violence is not a rare phenomenon in the region of post-Communist Europe and the dynamic varies on a great scale. Moreover, the article presents a picture of electoral violence occurring in different settings with potentially different contextual preconditions that need to be studied separately.     

Electoral violence prevention: what works?

Elections are in theory democratic means of resolving disputes and making collective decisions, yet too often force is employed to distort the electoral process. The post-Cold War increase in the number of electoral authoritarian and hybrid states has brought this problem into relief. In recent years the prevention of electoral violence has played an increasingly large role in the democratic assistance activities undertaken by international agencies, following increased awareness within the international community of the specific security challenges that elections entail. However, there has to date been little systematic evaluation of the success of different electoral violence prevention (EVP) strategies in reforming electoral institutions so as to enable them to maintain the peace during the electoral period. This article assesses the effectiveness of two common types of international EVP activity. Using a new global dataset of EVP strategies between 2003 and 2015, this article finds evidence that capacity-building strategies reduce violence by non-state actors, whereas attitude-transforming strategies are associated with a reduction in violence by state actors and their allies. The findings are relevant both for understanding the dynamics of electoral violence, and also for policymakers and electoral assistance providers in the international community who have responsibility for the design of democratic assistance projects in states at risk of electoral violence.     

Using civil society as an authoritarian legitimation strategy: Algeria and Mozambique in comparative perspective

Recent research on civil society in authoritarian regimes shows that civil society can contribute to legitimating authoritarian rule. This finding has not, however, been connected with the nascent literature on authoritarian regime legitimation. This article seeks to bridge this gap by synthesizing the relevant theoretical literature and presenting an in-depth comparative analysis of Algeria and Mozambique. We argue that in both cases the ruling authoritarian regime has used civil society as a legitimation tool. The article identifies five patterns according to which authoritarian regimes can use civil society for legitimation purposes.     

Mapping ‘Hybrid Regimes’: Regime Types and Concepts in Comparative Politics

This article addresses the conceptual challenges involved in mapping political regimes. The first section offers a critique of regime typologies that adopt a uni-dimensional approach to differentiating between political regimes. The second section shows why a two-dimensional typology is better grounded in liberal democratic theory as well as for analytically grasping the empirical variation between political regimes and regime change. The penultimate section proposes a classificatory scheme on the basis of a clear set of defining attributes of the two constitutive dimensions of liberal democracy – electoralism and constitutionalism. Equipped with this two-dimensional classificatory device the article proceeds in the last section to propose a regime typology with four main types of regime: democratic, constitutional-oligarchic, electoral-autocratic, and authoritarian. This provides a conceptual map in which the categories and subcategories developed by the literature on hybrid regimes can be located and analytically related to each other. The last section further divides the category of democratic regimes into four subtypes: liberal, constitutional, electoral, and limited.     

Party matters: the institutional origins of competitive hegemony in Tanzania

Electoral authoritarianism has emerged as a primary mode of authoritarian rule in the post-Cold War era. It is also a notably heterogeneous phenomenon, in terms of both its impact upon incumbents and the quality of contestation. This article investigates a specific type of electoral authoritarian outcome, a competitive hegemony. In competitive hegemonies regimes are able to dominate elections by large vote margins, but with comparatively much lower levels of electoral fraud and coercion. Using a case study of Tanzania and its ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), this article argues that distinct investments made under single-party rule into party institutionalization and the incorporation of subsistence-based peasants provided CCM with additional sources of elite cohesion, strong mobilization capacity, and therefore greater stability. The article shows how during multiparty elections elite defection has in fact been minimal, and voting patterns largely coincide with infrastructural investments made as part of Tanzania's socialist development programme, ujamaa. Moreover, while Tanzania's opposition parties have made important strides in recent years in terms of institutionalization, they are still precluded from competing effectively in large portions of the country where demand for new parties is low.     

The transformation of political party opposition in Malaysia and its implications for the electoral authoritarian regime

Malaysia's electoral authoritarian system is increasingly coming under pressure. Indicators of this are the metamorphosis of opposition forces since 1998 and, in particular, the results of the 2008 parliamentary elections. From 1957 until 1998 political party opposition was fragmented. An initial transformation of political party opposition began at the height of the Asian financial crisis, after a major conflict within the ruling United Malays National Organization in 1998. However, the regime was able to weaken the opposition, resulting in its poor performance in the 2004 elections. Afterwards, in a second transformation that has continued until the present time, an oppositional People's Alliance (Pakatan Rakyat) has emerged that now has a serious chance of taking over the federal government. This article argues that the increase in the strength and cohesion of political party opposition since 1998 has been caused mainly by five combined factors: the emergence of pro-democratic segments within a multi-ethnic and multi-religious middle class; the intensified interaction of political parties and civil society forces; the impact of new media; the eroded legitimacy of the United Malays National Organization and other parties of the ruling coalition; and the internal reforms within the Islamist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (Parti Islam SeMalaysia). Consequently it has become conceivable that the country will incrementally democratize in a protracted transition. Although the 1999 and 2008 elections were not foundational, they have been transitional. They may not have inaugurated a new democratic regime, but they have marked important phases in the struggle for democracy in Malaysia.     

In-between liberal authoritarianism and electoral authoritarianism: Hong Kong’s democratization under Chinese sovereignty, 1997–2016

On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the handover, Hong Kong’s transition towards a full democracy remains unsettled. Drawing upon the contemporary theories of hybrid regimes, this article argues that manipulations adopted by electoral authoritarian governments have become increasingly common in Hong Kong today. As Hong Kong’s elections, opposition activities, and media have been increasingly put under electoral authoritarian-style manipulations, the city-state is now situated in the “political grey zone” in-between liberal authoritarianism and electoral authoritarianism and its transition into a full democracy remains nowhere in sight. The case study of Hong Kong will help enrich the existing comparative literature on hybrid regimes by developing a new “in-between category” and offering an interesting case of democratization of sub-national polity.     

What it takes to win when the game is rigged: the evolution of opposition electoral strategies in Moscow, 2012–2017

This paper examines how the political opposition innovated strategies to overcome obstacles presented by Russia’s uneven electoral playing field. Using evidence from two municipal elections in Moscow, I argue that members of the opposition have coordinated around local contests in response to political opportunities created by the Kremlin, including the anti-electoral fraud protests of the winter of 2011–2012 and the resurrection of gubernatorial elections in 2012. Following these openings, grassroots electoral initiatives recruited and trained opposition-minded individuals, first focusing on established activists and then on politicized individuals, to run for municipal council seats. The campaigns provided training using ad hoc educational seminars and later developed electronic tools that lowered barriers to political participation. As a result of these campaigns, electoral competition has boomed at the local level in Moscow even as regional and national contests have become less competitive. The campaigns demonstrate the continued vulnerability of authoritarian regimes that rely on elections for political legitimacy. Furthermore, the development of highly portable online tools for campaigning has potentially long-term democratizing consequences.     

Subverting autocracy: emancipative mass values in competitive authoritarian regimes

Competitive elections in authoritarian regimes are inherently ambiguous: do they extend regime persistence or, vice versa, operate as subversive events? This article tests Inglehart and Welzel's “emancipatory theory of democracy”, which has not been tested for competitive elections in autocracies: when emancipative values grow strong, autocratic power appears increasingly illegitimate in people's eyes, which motivates subversive mass actions against authoritarian rule. For electoral outcomes this suggestion implies, first, that authoritarian incumbents are more likely to suffer electoral defeat when emancipative values have become more widespread. Second, post-electoral protest against fraudulent elections is more likely when emancipative values have become more widespread. To test these hypotheses, we analyse 152 elections among 33 electoral authoritarian regimes over 21 years from 1990–2011. We find that emancipative values are indeed strongly conducive to incumbent defeat while their effect on post-electoral protest is conditional: it only occurs in elections won by the incumbent. These findings intertwine two separately developed literatures: one on authoritarian regime subversion and the other on emancipatory cultural change.     

When do electoral institutions trigger electoral misconduct?

Drawing on two complementary mechanisms, this article explores the question of whether electoral institutions and conditions of electoral competition create incentives to promote electoral misconduct in young or developing democracies. The first mechanism explains how majoritarian institutions like disproportional electoral systems are more likely to trigger electoral fraud than consensus electoral institutions like proportional representation. However, for this mechanism to be activated, the incumbent must feel effectively threatened by the opposition. To better understand the way this mechanism works, the electoral history of the country also needs to be taken into consideration. Democracies which have a historical record of running clean elections are less likely to experience fraud than countries with a history of electoral misconduct. I test these theoretical claims using a dataset that contains relevant information for 323 parliamentary elections in 59 new or developing democracies in the period between 1960 and 2006. The empirical analysis shows a strong and robust empirical support for the two mechanisms.     

Explaining (and re-explaining) political change in the Middle East during the Arab Spring: trajectories of democratization and of authoritarianism in the Maghreb

After the 2011 Arab Spring, a pressing concern is to understand why some authoritarian regimes remain in power while others fall when confronted with similar difficulties. Earlier representations of the success of authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa generated common misperceptions concerning politically effective behaviour in the region. These views, shared by local autocrats and international actors alike, led them to propose ad hoc policy reorientations in response to a contagion of popular uprisings. In their turn, these policy responses directly contributed to the failure of authoritarianism and the production of democratic revolutions in several countries of the region. Such revolutionary options, although structured by the (lack of) opportunities for contestation present in each polity, are not predicable events as they depend on elite mis-assessments of the situation to be effective (as in Tunisia, Libya). Reciprocally, when reform pathways are made available by authoritarian regimes, contestation can be channelled into non-revolutionary political action (as in Morocco, Algeria).     

Justice institutions in autocracies: a framework for analysis

What role do justice institutions play in autocracies? We bring together the literatures on authoritarian political institutions and on judicial politics to create a framework to answer this question. We start from the premise that autocrats use justice institutions to deal with the fundamental problems of control and power-sharing. Unpacking “justice institutions” we argue that prosecutors and ordinary courts can serve, respectively, as “top-down” and “bottom-up” monitoring and information-gathering mechanisms helping the dictator in the choice between repression and cooptation. We also argue that representation in the Supreme Court and special jurisdictions enables the dictator and his ruling coalition to solve intra-elite conflicts facilitating coordination. We provide several examples from Mexico under the hegemonic system of the PRI and of Spain under Francisco Franco, as well as punctual illustrations from other countries around the world. We conclude by reflecting on some of the potential consequences of this usage of justice institutions under autocracy for democratization.