Who Transitions? Reassessing Competitive versus Other Authoritarian Regimes.

• In Event: Elections in Autocracies and Weak Democracies

Abstract

A significant body of research in comparative political science emphasizes the vulnerability of competitive authoritarian regimes to change, whether toward more democracy, more authoritarianism, or in leadership alone. Indeed, many competitive authoritarian regimes have transitioned to democracy, or experienced other changes. But do they really experience these changes at a higher rate than other types of regimes? One of the problems with the literature, as it stands today, is that competitive authoritarian regimes are treated, by definition, as vulnerable to change, and treated in analysis as a distinct population of cases from other undemocratic regimes. This masks three important dynamics that, consequently, go unaccounted for: 1) many competitive authoritarian regimes do not transition; 2) authoritarian incumbents in these regimes often make use of Potemkin parties that are ultimately loyal to authoritarian incumbents, but present the mirage of multiparty competition in cross-national analysis; and, most importantly, 3) regimes which are more authoritarian and less competitive than competitive authoritarian regimes also experience transitions to, or further away from, democracy. My research presents evidence for an unexpected empirical pattern that revises our understanding of regime dynamics in the world today: competitive authoritarian regimes are less prone to democratic transition than their more authoritarian counterparts. This means that these regimes may only appear to be more open but are more resilient than other undemocratic regime types.

Author

• Jeremy Martin Ladd, Penn State University