Undemocratic Regime Types and Immunization Against Extremism

• In Event: The Dynamics of Extremism in Democratic Regimes

Abstract

Why do some post-transitional democracies have extremist parties of the same ideological colour as the one displayed by the past regime, while others do not? This paper examines how the ideology of undemocratic regimes still has an impact on contemporary post-transitional democracies, suppressing or exacerbating extremist parties of the same ideology, depending on the typology of regime: authoritarian or totalitarian.

Existing studies on undemocratic regimes and democratization greatly overlook how the ideology of past regimes affects post-transitional party systems, particularly neglecting the specific role of ideology in shaping the ideological landscape of extremism in contemporary party systems. This paper argues that the ideology and the type of undemocratic regime are crucial factors in determining how political systems suppress or exacerbate the emergence of extremist political parties with an ideology akin to the one displayed by the past regime, after democratization.

The empirical model, which includes 28 countries and more than 500 elections, shows that while in former totalitarian regimes there are strong extremist parties belonging to the same ideological family as that of the past regime, in authoritarian regimes, which have a ‘mentality’ rather than an ideology according to Linz (2000), the same does not happen. Past authoritarian regimes seem to be immune to extremisms ideologically similar to the one displayed formerly, as this mentality that replaces ideology does not last after democratic transition. Furthermore, the model shows that the effect on countries which did not experience any form of undemocratic regime in the past is neutral.

The assumptions that sustain the empirical model are the following: (i) undemocratic regimes can be classified as either Authoritarian or Totalitarian, following Juan Linz’s typology (2000); (ii) this classification is based on existing literature, namely on Linz’s work. Many are the studies that have categorized the following regimes as totalitarian: Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Stalin’s Soviet Union. The authoritarian regimes used in this analysis are: Portugal, Spain, Greece according to categorizations such as the political regime classifications and transitions by Geddes et al. (2014), and also Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as these countries were only under the authoritarian part of the Soviet regime and were not exposed to Stalin’s totalitarianism (Linz 2000). (iii) the vote-share of extreme left and right parties after democratic transition will be used as a proxy for extremism. All the political parties included in this analysis were classified as extremist by other authors, for example by Piero Ignazi (2003) on his influential work “Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe”. Hence, this paper will not attempt to offer a new classification of extremist parties in order to preserve the robustness of the results; (iv) neutral regimes are those where the effect of undemocratic regimes was neutral.

Lastly, this paper attempts to contribute to the existing literature in four different ways: (1) highlighting the importance of the role of ideology on political systems after transitions to democracy. I argue that this extremely overlooked area of study still has a paramount effect on contemporary political systems; (2) to show how past undemocratic ideologies have a specific role in shaping post-transitional political systems in terms of extremist parties. I believe this paper can be very relevant in attempting to provide an explanation to why extremist parties emerge in some countries while in others they do not. This may be helpful in order to understand extremist parties dynamics’ considering that their prevalence over time and their particular rise in today’s world is a hot topic in contemporary politics; (3) this paper would present a very interesting typological effort to define the past ideology of undemocratic regimes considering their effect on post-transitional political systems. This is a brand new and I believe, extremely useful typology. If one could identify if a regime is authoritarian or totalitarian, they could predict how new extreme parties associated with the past regime would behave after transitions to democracy, and whether they would or not be considered a threat; (4) finally, to attempt to empirically define totalitarian regimes as opposed to authoritarian regimes, a difficult but I would say very relevant (see point 3.) distinction. Juan Linz (2000) considered that this distinction was indeed very hard to make, due to the scarcity of data, however, I believe that nowadays, in the Internet era it may be more feasible to attempt to make this conceptual distinction in an empirical way.

Author

• Catarina Leão, University of Oxford