Resetting Public Policy? Understanding Policy Change Across Regime Types

• In Event: Outputs of Autocracy: Policy and Inequality

Abstract

Democratization is often believed to reset the political game, contributing to lower inequality and improving public goods provision. However, transitions from authoritarianism to democracy often fail to lead to tangible policy changes, and the statistical evidence linking regime type and public policy is far from conclusive. This inconclusiveness is partially due to the use of different measures of democracy and economic policy, as well as different econometric techniques. However, it also reflects a lack of theoretical clarity on the ways in which regime change might affect policy outcomes. Which causal mechanisms link regime type with public policy? Under what conditions should we expect policy change after regime change? Is change more likely in some policy areas than in others?
I propose a theoretical framework for analyzing how different regime changes, in interaction with the characteristics of the policy area, affect the range of potential mechanisms that are likely to link regime type to policy. Such a framework will help us better understand how, and under which conditions, policy change is likely to occur following regime change.
To develop this framework, I first review the existing theoretical arguments linking regime type and policy. These can be grouped around five key ideas: electoral accountability, political competition, mobilization, free press and information, and coalitional politics. Focusing on the assumptions behind each of these mechanisms, I analyze how their relevance for policy change is affected by the characteristics of the political regime and of different policy areas. I argue that two factors determine which mechanisms are likely to affect the evolution of policy following a regime change: 1) the combinations of characteristics of the regimes in place before and after a regime type change; and 2) how visible a policy area is –or gets. For instance, in policy areas of low visibility, mobilization is less likely to be a relevant mechanism for policy change following democratization. Meanwhile electoral accountability is more likely to become a relevant mechanism if elections—even if not completely fair—were not held during the authoritarian regime.
I illustrate the usefulness of this framework in two ways. First, I use quantitative information from countries that democratize during the Third Wave of democratization to show how different aspects of such transition affect diverse policy areas in distinctive ways. Then, I use qualitative evidence, including archival resources, public information, and interviews, to trace the evolution of housing and financial policy in Argentina and Brazil across regime types.
The proposed framework sheds new light on the relationship between regime type and policy making, helping to clarify inconclusive results in the empirical literature, particularly in quantitative analyses. Moreover, a better understanding of the conditions under which and how policy change is possible with democratization, can help to implement desired policies and moderate exaggerated expectations that can led to citizens dissatisfaction with democracy.

Author

• Emilia Simison, Massachusetts Institute of Technology