Opposition Strategies to Overcome Autocratization in Polarized Democracies

Session Submission Type: Virtual Roundtable

Session Description

This roundtable will discuss and illustrate how we need a comparative and integrative approach bringing together different methodological approaches in order to explain how democratic oppositions can stop and reverse autocratization in fully or partially democratic regimes. An expanding body of research has been arguing in recent years that, first, democracy has been in retreat in the 21st century, even though some countries are still democratizing, and, second, that post-third wave autocratizations display some features different from previous eras. While previous work focused on incumbents, more recently, an emerging literature has been investigating how oppositions both contribute to and can help reverse autocratization. Research has asked, for example, through which strategies and actions institutions, opposition political parties, civil society and social movements can help overcome autocratization and related ills such as pernicious polarization. In this respect, various contributions have investigated what may be the best institutional policies, mobilization strategies, discourses and emotions to serve the cause of pro-democratic movements in contexts of autocratization. This research often demonstrates that successful and two-way cooperation among opposition actors at different levels of the pollical system, such as civil society, social movements and political parties, is crucial for opposition success. Furthermore, the chances of success of any opposition strategy depends on the particular stage and context of autocratization: it is an interactive process where the perceptions and responses of other actors is as crucial as the intentions of the agents employing these strategies.
Jennifer McCoy will chair the panel and introduce the topic. She has written extensively on pernicious polarization and democratic erosion and is now working on opposition strategies to overcome polarization and autocratization, with Murat Somer.
Seven presenters in this roundtable will show how they combine different levels and methods in their own research and how their perspectives complement each other in order to reach a better understanding of opposition strategies. Adrienne LeBas will discuss how polarization and autocratization are shaped by the organizational resources available to opposition actors. Her approach highlights the utility of historical institutionalism as a method for understanding boundary creation, group solidarity, and regime outcomes. Tom Ginsburg’s presentation will be on whether and how international law can retard—and sometimes facilitate—autocratization. He will present some large-n data, but will place emphasis on the qualitative dimension. Laura Gamboa will offer a nuanced overview on the combination between institutional/extra-institutional, radical/moderate strategies and the mechanisms by which these can hinder or help the potential autocrat erode democracy. She will discuss in detail the process tracing strategies --from the case selection, to the empirical implications, to the use of shadow cases to assess some of the scope conditions of her theory.
Andreas Ufen will discuss how various factors came together to enable the success of opposition strategies ahead of the 2018 elections in Malaysia. He will highlight the importance of the “day after” oppositions manage to unseat authoritarian incumbents and explain why the new government collapsed in 2020. Tahmina Rahman examines how civil society sympathizers of repressed political parties can help them propagate their policy agenda amid a restrictive information environment and reinforce partisan polarization, with a focus South Asia. She uses quantitative content analysis and deep interviews.
Focusing on the 2019 elections in Istanbul, Turkey where the opposition was able to win, Melis Laebens will combine quantitative analysis of election results with survey analyis. The former will show who switched their votes from incumbent to oppositon and how polarization is not so stark in every demographic or political group, and supplement these findings with survey findings offering insights into the question of why. Finally, Murat Somer will discuss how the main challenges of democratic oppositions in autocratizing contexts are vertical and horizontal coordination among actors such as different political parties and social movements, as well as coordination of different discursive, emotional and mobilizational strategies. He will then argue that multilevel analysis and mixed methods are necessary to uncover and theorize when and how oppositions manage to meet these challenges.

Chair: Jennifer McCoy, Professor, Georgia State University
Presenters:
Laura Gamboa, Asst Prof, University of Utah
Tom Ginsburg, Professor of Law, University of Chicago
Adrienne Lebas, Assoc Prof, American University
Melis Laebens, Post Doc, Oxford University
Tahmina Rahman, PhD Candidate, Georgia State University
Murat Somer, Professor, Koc University, Istanbul
Andreas Ufen, Sr Research Fellow, GIGA, Hamburg, Germany

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Chair

• Jennifer McCoy Georgia State University

Presenters

• Laura Gamboa University of Utah

• Tom Ginsburg University of Chicago

• Melis G. Laebens Nuffield College

• Adrienne LeBas American University

• Tahmina Rahman

• Murat Somer Koç University

• Andreas Ufen German Institute of Global and Area Studies