Contesting Autocracy: Explaining the Origins of Opposition Parties in Africa

• In Event: Comparative Oppositions and Elections Under Authoritarian Rule

Abstract

In an era of democratic instability and electoral autocracy, understanding the nature of opposition under authoritarianism has become increasingly important. This paper seeks to better understand the geo-spatial nature of opposition parties by explaining where and why they are able to win in founding multiparty elections. We argue that opposition parties should arise in areas that have both the grievance and capacity to oppose the regime. Thus, opposition parties should be most successful in places that have been historically marginalized or oppressed by the regime, but also feature a history of centralized political institutions, in other words, constituencies that used to be home to precolonial kingdoms. We find preliminary support for this theory using geo-located constituency-level electoral data for founding multiparty elections in several Angola, Cameroon, Ghana, Malawi and Zambia.

Authors

• Leonardo R. Arriola, University of California, Berkeley

• David Dow, Duke University

• Natalie Wenzell Letsa, University of Oklahoma