If They Can Pull This Show Off, Protest Is Futile: Voter Turnout and Protest Under Authoritarianism

• In Event: Global and Transnational Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 10. Contentious Politics

Abstract

Why do some elections in authoritarian regimes trigger protest while others suppress it? Existing scholarship shows that elections can destabilize autocracies by exposing fraud, coordinating opposition forces, and lowering collective action barriers (Tucker 2007; Trejo 2014; Shirah 2016). At the same time, elections can stabilize regimes by co-opting elites, distributing rents, and projecting durability (Gandhi and Przeworski 2006, 2007; Magaloni 2008; Reuter and Robertson 2015). Yet little attention has been paid to voter turnout itself as a political signal.

This paper advances a contingent signaling theory of turnout. I argue that the political consequences of voter turnout depend on its interaction with election legitimacy. In authoritarian regimes, high turnout combined with low electoral legitimacy signals regime strength and mobilization capacity, discouraging protest by lowering expectations of successful collective action. In contrast, high turnout combined with higher electoral legitimacy raises political expectations and is associated with greater protest. In democracies, turnout does not function as a comparable signal of regime durability, and the interaction effect is absent.

Using cross-national panel data from 1979 to 2021, drawing on protest data from GDELT, electoral and regime measures from V-Dem and NELDA, turnout data from global voter datasets, and socioeconomic controls from the World Bank, I estimate separate models for autocratic and democratic regimes. The results confirm the hypotheses: the turnout–legitimacy interaction significantly shapes protest only in autocracies. These findings clarify when elections deter protest and when they instead contribute to mobilization.

Author

• Bashir Tofangsazi, Xavier University