How Autocrats Address the Threat of Local Democratic Enclaves

• In Event: Elections and Parties under Authoritarian Rule

Abstract

In Turkey, the long-ruling autocrat, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have always faced local democratic opposition in a number of cities. While electoral autocracy prevails in national level politics, democracy continues to survive at the local level. The challenge became more salient in March 2019 when the opposition won local elections in major cities including Ankara, the capital, and Istanbul, the largest city, which had both been under AKP control since 2002. While conceding electoral defeat elsewhere, AKP and Erdoğan alleged irregularities in Istanbul and the Turkish Electoral Commission subsequently ordered the re-run of the election. The opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu won the rerun of the election, this time by an overwhelming margin, and Erdoğan’s AKP finally relented. Meanwhile, in Hungary, Victor Orbán, the leader of Alliance of Young Democrats – Hungarian Civic Union (Fidesz) Party and Hungary’s prime minister, experienced a similar political defeat at the local level in October 2019. The opposition alliance’s (Momentum – DK – MSZP – Dialogue – LMP) candidate for the mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony, defeated Fidesz–KDNP alliance’s candidate István Tarlós who had been in office since 2010. Similar to Turkey, the opposition captured not only Budapest, the capital, but also several other major big cities.

Turkey and Hungary offer contemporary examples of what I call the phenomenon of the “democratic enclave dilemma” that has become increasingly common under competitive authoritarianism. The rise of competitive authoritarian regimes around the world has led to the emergence and proliferation of local democratic enclaves, local governments controlled by the democratic opposition, opening spaces for opposition political action at the local level under competitive authoritarian settings. In full-blown authoritarian regimes, local elections do not create an area of meaningful contestation where opposition forces may pose significant challenges to the regime. However, in competitive authoritarian regimes, the struggle between national ruling parties and opposition parties at the local level is more meaningful.

A rich literature on authoritarian politics focuses on how autocrats use nominally democratic institutions such as political parties, elections, and legislatures to address threats to their rule (Gandhi, 2008; Gandhi and Przeworski, 2007; Gandhi and Lust-Okar, 2009; Magaloni,2006). Yet, this literature largely focuses on theories of institutions and strategies at the national level. There is also a comparative politics literature on regime juxtaposition. This scholarship, however, largely focuses on the existence of authoritarian enclaves within what are democratic regimes at the national level, especially in large federal systems (Behrend and Whitehead, 2016; Gibson, 2005, 2013; Giraudy, 2015; Kelemen, 2020; Mickey, 2015; Sidel,2014). Yet, on the flipside, the existence of democratic enclaves in competitive authoritarian regimes, has received little systematic attention (Freeman, 2018; Gilley, 2010; McMann, 2018). This paper seeks to answer the question: How do autocrats address the threat of local democratic enclaves to their rule in competitive authoritarian regimes?

Drawing on theories of authoritarian politics and regime juxtaposition, this study presents and assesses a theory of how competitive authoritarian regimes address the threat posed by local democratic enclaves, and more generally explores the struggle between national autocrats and local democrats. I argue that autocrats use a two-pronged strategy to mitigate the threat posed by local democratic enclaves. These strategies are economic punishment of local democratic enclaves through the preferential allocation of resources, and rhetorical punishment through salient political attacks that blame local democratic enclaves for various economic and political problems. I illustrate this theory with quantitative and qualitative evidence from a competitive authoritarian regime, Turkey. The study aims to contribute to the understanding of authoritarian politics and subnational politics. For authoritarian politics, it sheds light on the subnational dynamics of authoritarian politics, which has been overlooked by national-level theories of authoritarianism. Moreover, it conceptualizes and draws attention to an increasingly common but understudied facet of competitive authoritarian regimes. For subnational politics, the study diverges from the standard models of regime juxtaposition that focus on subnational authoritarianism in democracies and aims to provide insights into the reverse side of the story: local democratic enclaves in nationally competitive authoritarian regimes.

Author

• Burcu Kolcak, Rutgers University