Democratic Check? Incumbent Parties and Democratic Backsliding

• In Event: Authoritarian Government & Democratic Backsliding

Abstract

Under what conditions can an incumbent's party be expected to constitute a democratic check on an incumbent’s undemocratic aspirations? I argue that partisans will safeguard democracy only if their own political success does not depend on an incumbent. I formalize this argument in a global game before employing two different identification strategies to test it empirically. I first develop synthetic controls for the cases of Hungary, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Second, I exploit a multiperiod difference-in-differences design based on panel matching. In both designs, I consider countries as being treated when a political party highly dependent on their leader gets to govern with a qualified legislative majority that enables them to make unilateral constitutional amendments. Both strategies reveal that the onset of such parties’ rule has detrimental effects on a country’s quality of electoral democracy. This has implications for understanding the role of political parties for democratic survival. Unlike classical research traditions, my findings suggest that party system institutionalization is not as important for democratic stability as power structures within parties.

Author

• Felix Dwinger, University of Gothenburg