Political Oppositions in Democratic and Authoritarian Regimes: A State-of-the-Field(s) Review

Abstract

Political opposition has long been one of the most dramatically understudied elements of real-world politics in contemporary democratic and authoritarian regimes. The past decade or so has, however, witnessed an upsurge of new opposition research that begs for a major state-of-the-field review. Interestingly, recent scholarship has focused more on manifestations of opposition in authoritarian and hybrid than in democratic systems, which indicates a latent reconceptualization of political opposition (setting aside older distinctions between regime-loyal opposition and regime-challenging forms of resistance, dissidence and contestation). With a focus on party-based forms of opposition, which have been widely considered to mark the most effective form of opposition, this review article takes stock and highlights key issues for future research as well as some inherent obstacles to the emergence of a more integrated field of cross-regime opposition studies.

The “Accidental Candidate” Versus Europe’s Longest Dictator: Belarus’s Unfinished Revolution for Women

“…She was selected opposition leader not through a formal process but by default. The "accidental" nature of her candidacy and leadership breaks previous conceptions of how opposition leaders are chosen (Helms, 2022) but women executives, including Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom and Angela Merkel of Germany, are often depicted as "accidental" and "unexpected" (Jalalzai, 2013).…”

“…Even research analyzing women heads of government, including Thatcher and Merkel, tends to ignore their roles in leading the opposition (Beckwith, 2015). According to Helms (2022), research analyzing gender and opposition is grounded in resistance women face as politicians or opposition to the goals of women's empowerment. In contrast, this article and thematic issue directly focus on varied ways women can lead the opposition even in autocratic systems.…”

“…Indeed, electoral autocracies are the most common types of authoritarian regimes and yet Tskihanouskaya leads the anti-system opposition party seeking democratic regime change in Belarus from abroad (Lührmann et al, 2018;Schedler, 2013). Her rise breaks the traditional understanding of how opposition leaders arise in autocracies, especially in presidential systems (Helms, 2021(Helms, , 2022. This case study of Belarus allows us to better examine the link between women's rise to prominence through activism and family connections, but also the limits on women's political executive ascensions in autocratic systems.…”

Gender and Strategic Opposition Behavior: Patterns of Parliamentary Oversight in Belgium

“…Although political opposition has long been understudied, there has been a marked increase in the number of studies on the topic in recent years (Helms, 2022). Empirical research into opposition behavior in the legislature often focuses on general patterns (e.g., conflictual versus cooperative strategies) or party-level variation, for instance between populist and mainstream parties (Louwerse & Otjes, 2019) or between parties that are permanently in opposition and those for whom the opposition status is anticipated to be temporary (De Giorgi & Ilonszki, 2018;Tuttnauer, 2018).…”

Women Opposition Leaders: Conceptual Issues and Empirical Agendas

“…This thematic issue combines several areas of international political research that have risen to major prominence in recent years into a novel and increasingly important agenda. The first of those areas concerns political oppositions, which, following Dahl's seminal work from the 1960s (Dahl, 1966), has been rediscovered more recently and developed into a complex field now covering both democratic and autocratic regimes (Helms, 2021(Helms, , 2022. There is an increasing awareness that the quality of democracy rests to a considerable extent on the state of the political opposition and that even the performance of regimes beyond liberal democracy is to a large degree shaped by political oppositions of various natures.…”