Elections and Democratization in Authoritarian Regimes

Donno, Daniela

doi:10.1111/ajps.12013

Cited by 181 publications

(106 citation statements)

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“…Incumbent defeat and democratization are analytically separate, albeit related, concepts that both have binary outcomes: the result of each election might be incumbent defeat or no incumbent defeat, democratization or the status quo. Thus, I first use logistic regression models to estimate the covariates of each outcome separately in keeping with previous studies of authoritarian elections (Donno 2013;Hafner-Burton, Hyde, and Jablonski 2014;Howard and Roessler 2006).…”

Section: Methodmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To address this puzzle, scholars point to various factors such as the degree of competitiveness within the regime (Brownlee 2009a;Roessler and Howard 2009), linkage with democratic superpowers (Levitsky and Way 2010), international pressure on the fairness of elections (Donno 2013), features of the information environment (PopEleches and Robertson 2015), regime strategies such as fraud and harassment of the opposition, and opposition strategies such as coalition building (Bunce and Wolchik 2011;Donno 2013;Howard and Roessler 2006). I propose that pre-election protest also contributes to incumbent defeat and democratization.…”

Section: Authoritarian Elections Mobilization and Democratizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It might also be hypothesized that when the opposition is united, other contenders are more inclined to resort to protest activities. From Donno (2013), I include a dummy variable that accounts for whether opposition parties formed a unified platform, coordinated their campaign, or united behind a presidential candidate (see Table 1 for a statistical summary).…”

Section: Thus I Include Dummy Variables For Countries In Central Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Preelection Mobilization and Electoral Outcome in Authoritarian Regimes*

Kadivar¹

2017

Mobilization: An International Quarterly

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Does pre-election protest have an effect on the outcomes of authoritarian elections? Electoral authoritarian regimes use elections to consolidate their power and claim democratic legitimacy. Nonetheless, on some occasions authoritarian incumbents lose elections despite their advantages and a democratic breakthrough is achieved. I propose that pre-election protest contributes to such election results. Existing scholarship focuses primarily on the effectiveness of post-election upheavals, but the effects of pre-election protest are still theoretically and empirically understudied. This paper proposes a theory for why pre-election contention has an independent effect on incumbent defeat of authoritarian regimes and democratization. I present empirical support for the association between pre-election protest activities, incumbent defeat, and democratization using data from 190 elections across 65 countries with non-democratic regimes. The findings of this analysis have important implications for studies of social movements, authoritarian politics, and democratization. 2 Pre-Election Mobilization and Electoral Outcome in Authoritarian RegimesWhile elections are central to democracy, holding elections is not sufficient for a regime to be considered democratic. Most authoritarian regimes in the world hold elections in which the incumbents are almost always assured of victory due to abuse of power, violation of civil liberties, and electoral manipulation. Nonetheless, on rare occasions oppositions can defeat an authoritarian incumbent and achieve a democratic Democratization is one of the more significant consequences of popular mobilizations that has been understudied from the perspective of political process theory, the dominant approach of social movement studies (Tarrow 2012:21). The literature on the consequences of social movements, for instance, has mostly focused on the outcome of policy change since it studies the outcome of movements in the context of consolidated democracies (Amenta et al. 2010;Giugni 1998). To fill this gap, this paper builds on the general social movements scholarship and the few existing studies of movements in authoritarian states (Almeida 2003;Goodwin 2001;Wood 2000) in order to theorize the ability for contentious collective action to empower opposition groups and thus affect electoral outcomes in authoritarian regimes. Pre-election protest has an independent effect on electoral outcomes because it shows there are viable alternatives to the regime, encourages defection within the regime, signals the spread of grievances to both the regime and voters, and sometimes create new grievances when faced with repression.

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Section: Methodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Authoritarian Elections Mobilization and Democratizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Thus I Include Dummy Variables For Countries In Central Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Preelection Mobilization and Electoral Outcome in Authoritarian Regimes*

Kadivar¹

2017

Mobilization: An International Quarterly

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“…In closed autocracies, the chief executive and the legislature are either not subject to elections, or there is no de-facto competition in elections such as in one-party regimes. Regimes with elections that do not affect who is the chief executive (even if somewhat competitive) also fall into this category (following Brownlee, 2009;Donno, 2013;Rössler & Howard, 2009, p. 112).…”

Section: The Row Typologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Regimes of the World (RoW): Opening New Avenues for the Comparative Study of Political Regimes

Lührmann

Tannenberg

Lindberg

2018

PaG

297

140

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Classifying political regimes has never been more difficult. Most contemporary regimes hold de-jure multiparty elections with universal suffrage. In some countries, elections ensure that political rulers are-at least somewhat-accountable to the electorate whereas in others they are a mere window dressing exercise for authoritarian politics. Hence, regime types need to be distinguished based on the de-facto implementation of democratic institutions and processes. Using V-Dem data, we propose with Regimes of the World (RoW) such an operationalization of four important regime types-closed and electoral autocracies; electoral and liberal democracies-with vast coverage (almost all countries from 1900 to 2016). We also contribute a solution to a fundamental weakness of extant typologies: The unknown extent of misclassification due to uncertainty from measurement error. V-Dem's measures of uncertainty (Bayesian highest posterior densities) allow us to be the first to provide a regime typology that distinguishes cases classified with a high degree of certainty from those with "upper" and "lower" bounds in each category. Finally, a comparison of disagreements with extant datasets (7%-12% of the country-years), demonstrates that the RoW classification is more conservative, classifying regimes with electoral manipulation and infringements of the political freedoms more frequently as electoral autocracies, suggesting that it better captures the opaqueness of contemporary autocracies.

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“…In fact, both supporters and opponents of the "democratization by election" thesis (Lindberg, 2009) suggest that multiparty elections will affect -positively or negatively -the stability and survival of autocratic regimes, depending on the context. Scholars have highlighted, inter alia, the importance of the international setting (Levitsky and Way, 2010;Bunce and Wolchik, 2011), the level of economic development (Blaydes, 2011), the specific design of electoral institutions (Lust-Okar, 2006), divergent patterns of party building (Morse, 2014) and regime party institutionalization (Magaloni, 2008), domestic threat levels (Gandhi, 2008), and the cohesiveness of elite coalitions, as well as the role of opposition tactics and tactical emulation through mechanisms of diffusion (Bunce and Wolchik, 2011;Donno, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: State capacity and elections in the study of authoritarian regimes

Croissant

Hellmann

2017

International Political Science Review

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Studies of multiparty elections in authoritarian regimes have proliferated in recent years.Nevertheless, the available evidence remains inconclusive in terms of when, where, or why elections work to sustain or undermine authoritarian rule. The contributions to the special issue "State Capacity, Elections and the Resilience of Authoritarian Rule" argue that analyzing the extent to which the effect of elections on authoritarian regime resilience is mediated through the factor of state capacity helps to solve this puzzle. This introduction lays the analytical foundation for this discussion by reviewing key terms and concepts, and by highlighting possible theoretical connections between the state capacity literature on the one hand and the electoral authoritarianism literature on the other. Furthermore, it considers the contributions in this special issue, and points out areas of agreement and disagreement between the authors, while simultaneously placing the different arguments within the broader field of enquiry.

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Elections and Democratization in Authoritarian Regimes

Cited by 181 publications

References 42 publications

Preelection Mobilization and Electoral Outcome in Authoritarian Regimes*

Preelection Mobilization and Electoral Outcome in Authoritarian Regimes*

Regimes of the World (RoW): Opening New Avenues for the Comparative Study of Political Regimes

Introduction: State capacity and elections in the study of authoritarian regimes

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