Are non-competitive elections good for citizens?
| Author | Andrew T Little |
| DOI | 10.1177/0951629816630436 |
| Published date | 01 April 2017 |
| Date | 01 April 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Are non-competitive elections
good for citizens?
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2017, Vol. 29(2) 214–242
©The Author(s) 2016
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DOI:10.1177/0951629816630436
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Andrew T Little
Department of Government, Cornell University, USA
Abstract
Many regimes, particularly autocracies, hold elections where the ruling regime’s victory is a fore-
gone conclusion. This paper provides a formal analysis of how these non-competitive elections
affect citizen welfare compared to a non-electoral baseline. To do so, I first develop a game-
theoretic framework that captures many extant theories of why regimes hold non-competitive
elections, which are modeled solely as a public signal of the regime’s strength. Incumbents hold
non-competitive elections to signal strength or gather information, which allows the regime to man-
age political interactions more effectively. However, even though non-competitive elections are
a useful tool for (autocratic) regimes, they are also valuable to citizens. This is because citizens
can also utilize the information generated by the election, and may receive more transfers, less
repression, or more responsive policy than they would with no elections.
Keywords
Authoritarian politics; elections; welfare analysis
Introduction
The global spread of elections over the past two centuries—and, in particular, the past 50
years—is almost certainly the most important change in how people are governed over
this time span, and is perhaps the most significant and rapid change to political insti-
tutions in history. Recent increases in the proportion of countries holding elections have
been particularly pronounced in authoritarian, or at least not entirely democratic, regimes
(e.g. Gandhi and Lust-Okar, 2009; Levitsky and Way, 2002; Magaloni and Kricheli,
2009). Still, defined broadly enough, regimes that hold elections with substantial restric-
tions on participation or competition are neither a new phenomenon nor an aberration,
but are the modal category over the past two centuries (Miller, 2015a).
Corresponding author:
Andrew T Little, Cornell University, 301 White Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
Email: andrew.little@cornell.edu
Little 215
Many have lamented the existence (and, arguably, the rise) of regimes that combine
authoritarian rule with manipulated elections: in the first sentence of the introduction to
an edited volume on the topic, Schedler (2006) refers to electoral authoritarianism as
a ‘specter haunting the developing world’. If elections are rigged to the point that the
incumbent victory is always a forgone conclusion, manyof the positive effects attributed
to democracy—such as placing in power ‘good’ leaders and inducing those leaders to
represent citizens effectively—may be weaker or absent. Still, this does not address the
potentially more relevant comparison of whether citizens are better off in a regime that
holds such non-competitive elections than they would be in an authoritarian regime with
no elections at all. This question is not just of theoretical importance, given the often
heated debates in the policy community about whether developing countries should be
encouraged to hold elections (Carothers, 2011; Gershman and Allen, 2006; McFaul,
2004).
In order to answer how non-competitive elections affect citizens, I first provide a
formal framework to capture and clarify several recent arguments about why regimes
choose to hold these elections (Blaydes, 2010; Cox, 2009; Egorov and Sonin, 2011; Lit-
tle, 2012; Magaloni, 2006; Rozenas, 2011). More specifically,I develop a series of related
models that ask why a powerful actor with the ability to decide whether or not an elec-
tion is held—referred to here as the incumbent—would choose to do so. The unifying
assumption of the framework is that elections merely reveal a public signal of the incum-
bent strength before a political interaction with a representative citizen. Elections can
serve two purposes for the regime: first, those who know they are popular (and those
who want to mimic the popular types) can hold elections to signal strength (Egorov
and Sonin, 2011; Magaloni, 2006; Simpser, 2013); second, elections gather informa-
tion which the incumbent can use to rule more effectively (Cox, 2009; Lust-Okar, 2006;
Magaloni, 2006; Rozenas, 2011).
The welfare implications for the citizen are determined by comparing his expected
payoff with an election to his payoff when no election is held. I highlight three main
welfare effects of the regime holding an election. First, the citizen benefits from knowing
the information revealed by the election. For example, a citizen considering joining anti-
regime protests benefits from knowing when the regime is weak enough that the protests
will be large, and when the regime is strong enough that they are better off staying home
(several other reasons why being better informed can make citizens substantially better
off are detailed below). Second, as is typical in signaling models, elections held as a costly
signal are inefficient from the incumbent perspective, so elections held for this reason
weaken autocratic regimes on average.1Third, the information gathered by the election
may induce the incumbent to grant more or more efficient concessions (or, alternatively,
repress less). While the models highlight some potential mechanisms by which non-
competitive elections can harm citizens, the bulk of the theoretical evidence suggests
the answer to the titular question is ‘yes’ (or, at least, ‘better than previously thought’).
1. Related work and overview
Scholarly attention to non-competitive elections and authoritarian institutions more gen-
erally has sharply risen in recent years (Blaydes, 2010; Gandhi and Lust-Okar, 2009;
Levitsky and Way, 2012; Magaloni, 2006; Pepinsky, 2013). Previously dismissed as the-
ater to placate domestic or international audiences, we now have numerous strategic
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