Opposition, Populism and the Specter of Electoral Autocracy

• In Event: Democratic Institutions in Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

Across the globe, the practice of legitimate opposition is menaced by populists and autocrats. What is lost when legitimate opposition is undermined? This paper answers that pressing question. Traditionally, scholars have assumed that the value of opposition depended on the value of democracy—when opposition was undermined, democracy was undermined. These democracy-focused accounts are inadequate. Some scholars rely on highly idealized conceptions of democracy. As a result, these arguments provide scant insight into what is lost when flawed, real-world practices are undercut (Dahl 1971; Kaltwasser 2014). Alternatively, many scholars embrace minimal conceptions of democracy. But arguments based on these conceptions, conceptions divorced from traditional democratic values like political equality, shed little light on the moral stakes raised by opposition’s survival (Müller 2016; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2016).
My argument sidesteps these pitfalls. It does not proceed by linking opposition to democracy. Instead, I claim that systems defined by legitimate opposition, even inegalitarian systems, instantiate a valuable respect for citizens’ agency—they allow citizens opportunities to collectively impact outcomes that matter. By contrast, in regimes in which opposition has been undermined, institutions are actively disrespectful of citizens’ agency. They offer fewer legal opportunities to exercise agency within the political domain. More importantly, they employ institutions, like fraudulent elections, that usurp citizens’ agency. Those institutions shape the political environment so that no matter what citizens do, their actions will advance the regimes’ ends. As I show, regimes lacking opposition do not treat their citizens as agents. They treat them like tools. That is what is lost when opposition is undermined.

Author

• Alexander Kirshner, Duke University