The Rise of Multiparty Autocracy

• In Event: Authoritarian Government & Democratic Backsliding

Abstract

While most scholars associate multiparty government with democracy, recent empirical evidence shows that many authoritarian regimes include multiple parties in their governing coalition. The prevalence of multiparty autocracies is puzzling because the literature on authoritarian regimes generally assumes that when there is a ruling party, the latter governs alone in a “one-party” system. Theories of authoritarian power-sharing further consider granting the opposition access to governmental resources as both a risky and costly survival strategy for the autocrat. How can we then explain the rise of multiparty autocracy worldwide? In this paper, we propose a new framework to conceptualize autocratic party rule, and distinguish between two main types of authoritarian multiparty governments. The first one is pro-forma multiparty government, where there are several parties included in the cabinet, but all of them are actually controlled by the autocrat, as is the case in North Korea. The second one is de facto multiparty government, where the autocrat co-opts a select portion of the opposition into the cabinet to prevent a unified, strong opposition from emerging – as is the case in Malaysia for instance. After presenting new descriptive evidence on the prevalence and variety of multiparty autocracies, we proceed to investigate the implications of multiparty government for regime stability and authoritarian breakdown using an original and comprehensive dataset on government composition around the world (WhoGov). Our results show that multiparty government is an overlooked survival strategy for autocrats, and highlight the need to adopt a broader perspective on the role of parties – rather than the party – in dictatorships.

Authors

• Laure Sarah Bokobza, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

• Jacob Nyrup, University of Oslo