Institutionalising electoral uncertainty and authoritarian regime survival

Area of Science:

• Political Science
• Comparative Politics
• Regime Analysis

Background:

• Authoritarian regimes often use democratic emulation to prolong power.
• Multiparty competition can increase the vulnerability of electoral authoritarianism.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if the institutionalization of elections influences the stability or vulnerability of authoritarian regimes.
• To analyze the impact of electoral uncertainty on authoritarian regime survival.

Main Methods:

• Discrete-time event-history models for competing risks were employed.
• Analyzed data from 262 authoritarian regimes between 1946 and 2010.
• Assessed the effects of multiparty election sequences conditioned on competitiveness.

Main Results:

• Institutionalizing electoral uncertainty enhances authoritarian regime survival.
• Competitive electoral authoritarian regimes face substantial risks, with early elections increasing democratization probability.
• The risk of democratization diminishes after the initial elections.

Conclusions:

• The institutionalization of elections is key to authoritarian stability, but competitive forms carry inherent risks.
• Convoking multiparty competition is a high-risk, high-reward strategy for autocrats.
• Truly competitive authoritarianism is difficult to institutionalize, with few regimes surviving long-term.