Election-Rules and the Resiliency of Competitive Authoritarian Regimes

• In Event: Electoral Systems and Voting Rules

Abstract

The resiliency of competitive authoritarian regimes (CAs) despite rising opposition remains a critical puzzle in global politics. While macro-level studies attribute CAs’ survival to their ability to control societal divisions and state funds, Turkey’s ruling party’s sudden decline and rise in two consecutive 2015 elections challenges these macro-explanations. The point of departure in this paper is the idea that the almost experiment-like design offered by two elections only 5 months apart allows us to control for a large set of factors and enables us to analyze the dynamics of the dominant party’s ability to stay in power in CAs. While many election studies use district level election results, our analysis draws on (i) rarely used polling-station level data, (ii) a pre-election national representative survey, (iii) a specialized post-election survey on voters’ reasoning, (iv) a detailed analysis of the impact of the multilayered electoral formula used to distribute the votes of Turkish diaspora and (v) a review of changes in invalid votes. Among others, the discussion questions if and how the reallocation of polling stations, electoral rules (D’hondt method) that make small margins decisive in allocation of parliamentary seats, and the drastic decline in invalid votes were critical in Turkey’s ruling party’s rebound. Our findings highlight the critical implications of the analytical gap in CAs and democratization that focus on macro-level trends without taking into account election rules and their implementation. Despite the conclusions that CAs conduct elections fairly on the day of elections, our findings show how micro-organization of the elections can create legally justified biases. Turkey's sudden shift in its 2015 electoral results reveals the importance of geo-spatial redistribution of polling stations in the country, the degree of accessibility of diaspora polling stations and instability-averse non-ideological citizens creating an environment conducive for dominant parties to sustain their power. The strong correlations between the introduction of new polling stations and increasing support for the ruling party noted in the analysis indicated that the ability of dominant parties to regulate micro-implementation of national election rules and rearrange legitimate voting practices tends to shift the dynamics of the elections in favor of the ruling party and offers an important venue to account for the continuing electoral victories of CA regimes. The findings show how the scarcity of studies of micro-electoral practices can be attributed to the limited availability of sub-district level polling and socio-economic data; yet under-researched micro-dynamics undermine our efforts to understand the inner working and longevity of CAs. A thorough review of elections including both macro-rules and micro-implementations indicates that a careful balancing of election rules and visible and invisible constraints regarding polling station accessibility plays a crucial role in explaining the resiliency of CAs.

Authors

• Sultan Tepe, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Michael Dirksen, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Mine Tafolar, University of Illinois at Chicago