Do Seat Imbalances in the Legislature Enhance Risk of Democratic Erosion

• In Event: Elections in Autocracies and Weak Democracies

Abstract

Increasingly, democracies experience a slower death at the hands of elected leaders rather than the instant takeover of military regimes. Democratically-elected leaders find new ways to circumvent democratic rules and bend the institutions that restrain in order to give themselves an unfair advantage for the next election and thus erode democracy. While incumbents with weak commitment to democracy play a central role in this picture, it is also important to understand how they are indeed able to erode democracy. When such leaders become ‘powerful,’ democracies are particularly at risk. Such power can be curtailed by institutions of checks and balances. Yet, ‘powerful’ incumbents can remake those institutions. Therefore, as incumbents become more powerful, they will have an easier time going through with undemocratic transformation and pose a bigger threat to democracy. In this framework, power could mean a number of things. The literature already tells us that parliamentary vs presidential systems, especially concerning the power balance between the two branches, affects risk of breakdown. However, such institutional restrains can also be circumvented if the executive branch also commands a sizable majority in the legislature.
Therefore, this paper focuses on the seat share balances in legislatures as a crucial part of ‘power’ that can threaten democracy. I argue that seat (im)balance in the legislature is crucial to an incumbent’s ability to remake institutions. Particularly, if the executive and legislative branches are held by one party with a comfortable majority, the democracy in question is open to more threat from the incumbent. A single-party government with two-thirds majority is immensely more empowered to change the constitution than a coalition government with simple majority. What is more, whether the opposition is fragmented or unified matters as well. Incumbents can attack democracy faster or more efficiently in the face of an opposition that is fragmented and unable to cooperate to stop the incumbent. To analyze this seat (im)balance, this paper considers four variables: incumbent fragmentation, opposition fragmentation, seat superiority of incumbent, and length of tenure.
While electoral system design can also play an important role on these numbers, relying on seat shares is a more reliable tool. This paper excludes electoral system design as a variable since the variation in electoral systems is vast and can produce disparate results. What is more, seat shares can be affected by numerous additional factors like regional dynamics, local party politics, strategic voting, shifts in public perception of party dynamics etc. Accordingly, this study prioritizes the seat balance over electoral systems. This paper also avoids the discussion of ‘popularity of charismatic incumbents,’ or more precisely, populist leaders. Popular candidates can transform their charisma into votes and seats. Yet decreasing popularity does not automatically mean less seats in all cases. Sometimes popularity can be used to push for referendums that erode democracy even more drastically. Indeed, this route is likely to happen when a popular leader does not have enough seats for a proposed radical change. These cases are rare, but are worth considering.

Author

• Alper Yildiz, City University of New York - Graduate Center