Political Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

• In Event: Explaining Regime Decline and Transition

Abstract

The traditional view on the inception of democratic governance takes the extension of political representation to be the result of the elite’s failure to successfully cope with the demands of dissenting majorities. The elements of ancien regime cave in to demands for devising democratic institutions to either escape confiscation, or to show credible institutional restraints in order to convince away from mass revolts. In contrast, in this paper, I examine the possibility that the elite in power extend political rights and constitute new representative institutions in a bid to preempt rival factions’ attempt at political recruitment among the newly modernized and politicized segments of the society. Such a "bidding trend" into democracy and inclusive suffrage is most visible during the First Wave of democratizations in the second half of the 19th Century and the early 20th Century.

My explanation for the trajectory of such reforms and their end results in the forms of dictatorship and democracy predicts extension of suffrage based on the competitive advantage of parties in power, who are trying to keep the upper hand against their political rivals. The predictions of the logic are tested using data from transitions to modern national politics in Europe. I find political competition to be a shaping force of expanding representation, in addition to socioeconomic factors. This formulation imports partisanship among the elite and divisions among the electorate into a theory of suffrage expansion and retraction.

There is a wealth of writing on how and why increasing the reach of suffrage increase party competition but the logic of competition in a limited representation regime and its influence on extension of representation itself is left out of the picture. In the historical context, however, the existing elite viewed, with different degrees of suspicion and hopeful intelligence, the emerging class of politicized, or potentially political masses as possible allies in the dynamic game of political competition. Taking the competition as an independent variable, adds a significant component to the existing formulations of democratization and autocratization, as it is demonstrated in an emerging class of intra-elite theories that have much in common with the economic logic of democratization. The competition-based logic adds a cleavage among the elite to search for reasons why one group may acquiesce into suffrage extension, without the involvement of a threat to mass rebellion.

Based on the above, I outline a strategic model for the process, which includes divisions on votes among two existing elite parties P1 and P2 based on two possible cleavages. The constituency is mapped on two politicized dimensions. The dividing lines can be economic sector (industrial–agrarian), ideological, ethnic and alike. In the limited suffrage regime, party P1 has the upper hand. However, by extending suffrage to the rest of the population (relaxing the condition on one of the dimensions, this can be wealth for example), P2 can overcome P1 in the electoral race, or P1 can enhance its advantage. Hence, there is an incentive for extending suffrage, even in the absence of a threat from the side of the disenfranchised.

To examine the implications of the model outlined in the paper, I have compiled a dataset from combining the data on franchise extension and a number of controls with another dataset on the history of electoral competition in Europe. I have utilized the data from years prior to 1945 in order to capture the historical phase of democratizations prior to the geopolitical rivalries of the Cold War. The dependent variable of interest is the extension of suffrage. Political competition is proxied using the percentage of votes for the first party, and variations of this concept such as the difference between the votes for the first two parties. The results of fixed effect logistic regressions of suffrage extension on competitiveness of elections are reported. There is a significant and negative relation between competitiveness and decisions to extend the suffrage. The higher the votes are for the most popular party, or the difference between the first and the second party, the more likely it is that suffrage extension occurs.

To take stock, the electoral competition at the time of the extension of suffrage was more than likely to have been in favor of the suffrage-extending parties. The parties expected, or hoped for a similar distribution in the post-extension electoral regime. These observations does not match the predictions of the "economic" theory of democratization, where it is more likely that a weaker incumbent party (and more egalitarian economy) to acquiesce into demands of suffrage extension.

Author

• Navid Mehrdad, Columbia University