Aging gracefully? Why old autocrats hold competitive elections
| Date | 01 March 2018 |
| Author | Seiki Tanaka |
| Published date | 01 March 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2057891117728129 |
| Subject Matter | Research articles |
Research article
Aging gracefully? Why old
autocrats hold competitive
elections
Seiki Tanaka
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands; Yale University, USA
Abstract
This article examines the conditions under which dictators hold competitive elections, and looks
specifically at the role played by a dictator’s age. Drawing on previous studies arguing that
uncertainty increases the likelihood of competitive elections, Iargue that as a dictator ages,
uncertainty over the future increases within the regime, because government insiders’ expected
payoffs for supporting the incumbent decline as s/he ages. As a result, Iargue that older dictators
are more likely to hold competitive elections in order to reduce uncertainty. The article also tests
an implication of the argument: if uncertainty over the future drives elections, then it should be
mitigated in regimes with a clear successor. Using a large-N, cross-national dataset on autocrats
and competitive elections between 1960 and 2012, this article examines the argument and finds
that as dictators age, they are more likely to hold competitive elections, all else equal. The analysis
also finds that the effect of au tocrats’ age on competitiv e elections is mitigated in one- party
regimes where there exists an established succession rule, while the effect is more apparent in
personalist regimes without such a system.
Keywords
breakdowns of authoritarian regimes, competitive elections, dictatorships
Introduction
Between 1960 and 2012, 171 autocratic leaders held competitive elections in which the opposition
was legally allowed to compete with the incumbent. A growing body of literature studies
competitive elections under autocracy, and examines why autocratic regimes hold them (e.g. see
Gandhi and Lust-Okar, 2009; Hyde and Marinov, 2012). However, despite the existence of this
Corresponding author:
Seiki Tanaka, University of Amsterdam, Yale University PO Box 15578, Amsterdam, 1001 NB, Netherlands and USA.
Email: S.Tanaka@uva.nl
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2018, Vol. 3(1) 81–102
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/2057891117728129
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extensive literature, there is at least one under-examined factor that helps explain the mechanism of
competitive elections in a systematic way: dictator’s age.
A correlation between aging dictators and competitive elections can be observed in a number of
cases. Out of 171 autocrats who held a competitive election, 55 held them after they were older
than 65 (the 75th percentile). To name a few, Heydar Aliyev of Azerbaijan, Hassan Gouled
Aptidon of Djibouti, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay, Wojciech
Jaruzelski of Poland, Chiang Ching Kuo of Taiwan and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe held
competitive elections when they were past the retirement age in many advanced economies.
Some scholars argue that since autocrats get better and better at retaining power over time,
autocratic regimes become more entrenched in office as time goes by, and as their tenure increases,
they become less likely to be toppled (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003, Chiozza and Goemans,
2004, Svolik, 2009).
1
Whereas the studies do not directly examine the likelihood of competitive
elections, they suggest that autocratic regimes will be less likely to run the risk of electoral defeat
over time as the regimes continue to stay in power. If the mechanism is correct, we would expect
the likelihood of competitive elections to be higher at the early stage of regime installation, when
the incumbent is still learning to hold power.
By contrast, this article argues that an autocrat’s age can also affect the likelihood of compet-
itive elections, and the likelihood increases at the end of his rule. More specifically, drawing on
previous studies’ observations that uncertainty leads to competitive elections (Cox, 2009; Geddes,
2006; Schedler, 2013), this article first lays out an underlying mechanism of competitive elections:
when government insiders’ expected payoffs for supporting the incumbent decline, threat to the
incumbent and uncertainty over his political and even physical survival increases. And to reduce
the uncertainty, the incumbent is more likely to hold a competitive election. This article then
makes an original claim that dictators’ age provides a reasonable heuristic for government insiders
to re-evaluate their expected payoffs. This is because when a dictator gets older, government
insiders start contemplating whether the aging dictator is still capable of governing the country
or whether his/her successor will be able to do so, and how much longer they can keep receiving
the same amount of benefits and privileges. These concerns lead to a decline in their expected
payoffs for supporting the incumbent, and the decline in the expected payoffs in turn increases the
chance of defection from the disgruntled government insiders. As a result, the uncertainty the
incumbent faces increases.
Here, I argue that aging dictators can reduce this uncertainty by holding a competitive election.
Previous studies find that holding an election helps consoli date the incumbent’s rule through
co-optation (Gandhi and Lust-Okar, 2009; Gandhi and Przeworski, 2007; Geddes, 2006; Magaloni,
2006) and increased legitimacy (Beaulieu and Hyde, 2009; Blaydes, 2011; Levitsky and Way,
2010; Schedler, 2002), thereby reducing the uncertainty over their political survival. In addition,
this article argues that competitive elections provide one additional benefit: better post-tenure fates
for the incumbents – by holding a competitive election, incumbents can reduce their uncertainty
over their physical survival as well as political survival, because such elections allow smooth
power transition by providing more information (Cox, 2009) and increasi ng international and
domestic legitimacy during tenure as well as after retirement (Tanaka, 2016).
The article also examines an implication of this argument: if uncertainty over the future drives
elections, then it should be mitigated in regimes with a clear successor. More specifically,
the article identifies one condition under which a dictator’s age is more or less likely to spur
uncertainty over the future, depending on regime type. The key here is whether a regime has an
established succession system – the age-driven uncertainty effect is more likely to be observed
82 Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 3(1)
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