Anti-regime Uprisings and the Emergence of Electoral Authoritarianism

This paper explores the role of threats from below in the emergence of electoral authoritarianism. Mass uprisings for democratic regime change undermine closed authoritarian regimes by making it difficult for autocrats to maintain their regimes through repression and co-optation. Anti-regime uprisings also promote the establishment of electoral authoritarianism by toppling existing closed regimes or by compelling autocrats to offer political reform as a survival strategy. My analysis of closed authoritarian regimes, from 1961 to 2006, reveals that antiregime mass uprisings are significantly associated with transitions to electoral authoritarianism. I also find that nonviolent uprisings are more likely than violent uprisings to result in the establishment of electoral authoritarianism and that the effect of anti-regime uprisings on transitions to electoral authoritarianism is greater when a country is surrounded by more democracies or is ethnically or religiously homogeneous. ∗Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] Przeworski (2009, p.291) poses a question fundamental to democratic political reform: “Why would people who monopolize political power ever decide to put their interests or values at risk by sharing it with others? Specifically, why would those who hold political rights in the form of suffrage decide to extend these rights to anyone else?” He argues that revolutionary threats compel elites to acquiesce to demands for institutional reform. This article asks a similar question regarding the introduction of multiparty elections for the national executive and legislature in authoritarian regimes. Why would autocrats embrace electoral competition that puts their own interests at risk? Given the widespread adoption of authoritarian elections, a growing body of studies purports to explain the functional roles of multiparty elections in autocracies.1 These studies tend to “view the establishment of elections as a means by which dictators hold onto power” (Gandhi & Lust-Okar, 2009, p.404). Yet as Brancati (2014, p.321) points out, researchers often “infer leaders’ motivation for adopting nominally democratic institutions from the outcomes they produce.” Inferring the reasons for the emergence of multiparty elections from the roles those elections play in regimes, however, assumes that the functions served by authoritarian elections also explain their causes, which is not necessarily true (Brancati, 2014, p.321; Gandhi & Lust-Okar, 2009, p.407). Consequently, the current literature is plagued by a lack of systematic cross-national studies on the establishment of electoral authoritarianism (EA). EA regimes have multiparty elections with universal suffrage for the executive and legislature. This absence is in marked contrast to the accumulation of sophisticated empirical studies on the determinants of democratization (e.g., Acemoglu, Johnson, Robinson, & Yared, 2008). Researchers have yet to develop a systemic understanding of what factors are significantly associated with regime change to EA as well as whether the determinants of democratization also promote such 1According to recent studies, authoritarian elections 1) provide information about the underlying support for a regime (Magaloni, 2006) and the strength of the opposition (Cox, 2009); 2) efficiently distribute patronage to regime insiders, citizens, and the opposition (Blaydes, 2010; Magaloni, 2006); and 3) co-opt the opposition (Gandhi & Przeworski, 2007).