Electoral authoritarianism and economic control
| Author | Merete Bech Seeberg |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512117692802 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512117692802
International Political Science Review
2018, Vol. 39(1) 33 –48
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512117692802
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Electoral authoritarianism
and economic control
Merete Bech Seeberg
Aarhus University, Denmark
Abstract
While electoral revolutions in the Philippines and the post-Communist world have ousted dictators,
autocrats from Mexico to Zimbabwe have cemented their rule through regular multi-party elections. Why
do elections sometimes undermine authoritarian regimes while at other times they help sustain them? I
argue that a dictator’s control over the economy conditions the effect of authoritarian elections. Where
rulers command the heights of the economy, elections are more easily manipulated to sustain their rule. But
where such control is lacking, elections may spur regime change. In a cross-national study of autocracies
from 1970 to 2006, I find that as incumbent control over the economy increases, elections are less likely to
lead to regime breakdown. Where economic control is at its lowest, elections increase the risk of regime
collapse. Thus, research on authoritarianism needs to supplement the study of authoritarian regime types
and institutional characteristics with a focus on the rulers’ control over the state and the economy.
Keywords
Authoritarianism, elections, regime breakdown, economic control, electoral manipulation, state capacity
Introduction
Today, the label ‘electoral authoritarianism’ could be applied to the majority of the world’s autocra-
cies, as more than half of these regimes have recently held a multi-party election. But the effect of
such electoral events on regime stability is disputed. Do multi-party elections sustain authoritarian
rule or promote its downfall?
Following the Serbian parliamentary and presidential elections in September 2000, the electoral
commission abandoned the tallying of votes as they realized that the results were not in favor of
incumbent President Slobodan Milošević, causing hundreds of thousands of protesters to storm the
federal parliament building. The coal industry was paralyzed by strikes and central elites of the
ruling front defected (Bunce and Wolchik, 2011: 110–111). Within weeks, Milošević gave up
power in the ‘Bulldozer Revolution’. Along with a number of other cases, this has spurred a belief
in elections as a force for transforming dictatorships. Elections are theorized to destabilize and
Corresponding author:
Merete Bech Seeberg, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Bartholins Allé 7, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
Email: m.bech@ps.au.dk
692802IPS0010.1177/0192512117692802Bech Seeberg
research-article2017
Article
34 International Political Science Review 39(1)
sometimes even democratize autocracies (e.g. Bunce and Wolchik, 2011; Howard and Roessler,
2006; Kuntz and Thompson, 2009; Levitsky and Way, 2010; Lindberg, 2006; Schedler, 2006).
But other rulers show no signs of conceding power in spite of multi-party elections. In Zimbabwe,
President Robert Mugabe cemented his rule by winning the heavily manipulated yet relatively
peaceful 2013 elections. The main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change –
Tsvangirai, lost 30 seats and split the following year. Similarly, in the authoritarian regimes of
Malaysia and Singapore, Egypt under Hosni Mubarak, and Mexico in the 20th century, rulers have
used regular, multi-party elections to their advantage, leading scholars to conclude that multi-party
elections are just another tool adopted and adapted to sustain authoritarian rule (e.g. Blaydes, 2011;
Lust, 2009; Magaloni, 2006).
But although the effects of authoritarian institutions on regime stability are widely studied, little
comparative evidence exists for when, where, or why elections would sustain authoritarian rule
rather than undermine it. I argue that the effect of authoritarian elections on regime stability
depends on the central capacities available to the ruling front. It has recently been argued that elec-
tions are more likely to stabilize dictatorships where rulers dispose over strong states and, con-
versely, that elections – at least when they are somewhat competitive – may spur democratization
if sufficient international pressure is applied (Donno, 2013; Levitsky and Way, 2010; Seeberg,
2014). But rulers lacking an efficient bureaucracy or facing international pressure – as is the case
in Zimbabwe under the rule of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF)
– still manage to sustain their rule through multi-party elections.
I propose that not only the administrative and repressive arms of the state and the role of the
international community are important in understanding the role of elections. Rulers’ domination
of the economy matters. Control over the economy, partly through means of the state such as a
large public sector and regulation of private business (Greene, 2007), but also through control over
natural resource rents (Levitsky and Way, 2010), may allow a dictator to manipulate elections to a
degree where they sustain her rule rather than undermine it.
This article tests the claim that multi-party elections are more likely to stabilize dictatorships
where rulers control the economy and more likely to break down following elections where eco-
nomic control is limited or absent. First, I theorize how economic control matters regarding the
effect of elections as rulers rely on economic domination to carry out electoral manipulation.
Second, I test the claim on cross-national data of all authoritarian regimes from 1970 to 2006. I find
that as economic control increases, the likelihood decreases that the regime breaks down following
elections. Authoritarian elections, however, are not necessarily regime-stabilizing even in cases
where the rulers control the economy. Rather, economic control reduces the risk of breakdown fol-
lowing elections. The findings imply that we need to supplement the study of authoritarian regime
types and institutional characteristics with a focus on the economic capacity of the ruler.
Authoritarian elections and regime stability
Research on electoral authoritarianism has blossomed in the 21st century and a multitude of diverg-
ing arguments on the effect of elections has been presented. Elections won with supermajority
victories signal invincibility (Magaloni, 2006), they are used to co-opt or split the opposition
(Malesky and Schuler, 2010), and they allow the ruling party to bind voters through patron–client
relationships, thus stabilizing the regime (Lust, 2009). But surprising electoral setbacks for the rul-
ing party may also cause the elite to rebel (Magaloni, 2006: 258) and fraudulent elections can
become focal points for opposition mobilization and citizen protests (Howard and Roessler, 2006;
Kuntz and Thompson, 2009) making authoritarian elections inherently destabilizing. Thus, the
question, do elections threaten authoritarian rule or do they help sustain it?
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