Institutionalized Parties and Civil Conflict

• In Event: Elections and Parties under Authoritarian Rule

Abstract

How do institutionalized political parties affect civil conflict across regimes? Conventional wisdom is that democracy makes conflict less likely by providing citizens with opportunities to participate and affect the outcome through freedoms of speech and association and universal suffrage. Scholars have also long viewed parties as central actors in contemporary democracy, playing an important role in interest aggregation, helping to build legitimacy, and resolving potential conflicts, but little has focused on the unique ways that party system features help to reduce conflict separately from democratic freedoms. This is important for understanding how different aspects associated with democracy matter across regimes; research on authoritarian regimes shows that non-democratic states are more likely to establish political parties and hold elections with similar outcomes, which also has a stabilizing effect compared to other forms of autocracy. We examine two competing explanations concerning the link between party institutionalization and civil conflict. On the one hand, more institutionalized political parties offer stronger channels for patronage, communication, and representation, which should serve as a mechanism for resolving conflict in both non-democracies and democracies alike by improving coordination among domestic actors. At the same time, however, more institutionalized parties may exacerbate civil conflict if they support interest aggregation and mobilization against a backdrop of limited freedoms. We also consider whether different aspects of party institutionalization affect conflict in similar ways, anticipating that some components that are associated with stronger party institutionalization---like programmatic linkages---might have a comparatively weaker effect across regimes. In exploring the relationship between party institutionalization and civil conflict across regimes, we take into account both nonlinearities as well as historical effects. Initial findings suggest that greater party institutionalization is positively and linearly associated with conflict risk in less democratic regimes, but that this result is driven by different factors—national level organizations and distinct platforms increase conflict risk in non-democracies, while clientelist links reduce the risk of civil conflict in less democratic regimes. By considering separately how various features associated with democracy relate to conflict risk in the absence of other democratic elements, these findings have important implications for explaining both what it is about democracies that helps to reduce conflict and how party institutionalization may influence the likelihood of democratization.

Authors

• Sanghoon Park, University of South Carolina

• Matthew Charles Wilson, University of South Carolina