Participation and boycott in authoritarian elections
| Date | 01 January 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0951629816630431 |
| Author | Douglas Dion,Gail Buttorff |
| Published date | 01 January 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Participation and boycott in
authoritarian elections
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2017, Vol. 29(1) 97–123
©The Author(s) 2016
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DOI:10.1177/0951629816630431
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Gail Buttorff
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Kansas, USA
Douglas Dion
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Iowa, USA
Abstract
The existence of authoritarian elections raises a number of questions regarding the strategies
of political opposition. What explains the choice of strategy among key opponents of a regime?
What determines when opposition groups willingly participate in elections and when they engage
in electoral boycott? To understand the opposition’s strategic choices, we develop a formal model
of government–opposition interaction under authoritarianism. We contribute to the literature on
election boycotts in emphasizing the effect of uncertainty about the strength of the regime on
strategic decisions. The model produces predictions for several key features of authoritarian elec-
tions, including the decision to participate, boycott, and mobilize against the regime. Importantly
and uniquely, the model provides an explanation for variation in opposition strategies within a
particular country. Using the case of Jordan, we illustrate how the results of the model can be
used to explain variation in opposition strategy across parliamentary elections.
Keywords
Authoritarian elections; boycott; opposition strategy; incomplete information; Jordan; Jordanian
elections
1. Introduction
Authoritarian elections pose a ‘strategic dilemma’ for opposition groups (Posusney,
2005; Schedler, 2002b). Exactly how opposition groups respond to the dilemma posed
by authoritarian elections is not well understood. Do they participate in elections they
believe to be unfair or illegitimate? Or does the opposition boycott, forfeiting any pos-
sibility of political influence? In a significant number of cases, the answer has been to
Corresponding author:
Gail Buttorff, University of Kansas, 1541 Lilac Lane, Lawrence, Kansas 66045, USA.
Email: gail-buttorff@ku.edu
98 Journal of Theoretical Politics 29(1)
abstain from participation. Looking at both the legislative and presidential levels world-
wide from 1990 to 2002, Beaulieu (2006) found that roughly thirteen percent involved
an electoral boycott. Boycotts are a widespread phenomenon, occurring in approximately
one-third of all countries, both democratic and authoritarian, that held national-level
elections between 1990 and 2008.
Explanations of boycotting to date have focused almost exclusively on electoral fac-
tors. One strand sees electoral boycotts as sincere steps to protest the unfairness of the
electoral process (Beaulieu, 2014; Bratton, 1998; Lindberg, 2006, 2009). Manipulation
of elections and the electoral rules is prevalent in many states. Foregoing participation
in such cases is meant to expose the elections as the charade they are. Another set of
theories, not necessarily at odds with the protest view, argues that boycotts reflect tactical
considerations of opposition parties who prefer boycotting to participating and facing
a devastating electoral loss (Bratton, 1998; Pastor, 1999). Both theories see boycotts
as primarily a response to the lack of real electoral competition. Focusing on electoral
competition explains one of the distinctive characteristics of boycotts, namely their con-
centration among authoritarian regimes: approximately 90% of election boycotts occur
in countries rated ‘partly free’ or ‘not free’ by Freedom House (Buttorff, 2011).
Electoral considerations may do an exceptional job of explaining differences between
authoritarian and non-authoritarian countries, but are weaker when it comes to explain-
ing the variation in opposition strategy across authoritarian regimes, and within a single
authoritarian country across elections. Opposition parties in such regimes always doubt
the legitimacy of the elections, always take issue with the manipulation of the electoral
process, and with very high probability can expect to lose the election. And yet not all
authoritarian elections are boycotted. Among authoritarian elections held between 1990
and 2008, 20% of legislative elections and 16% of presidential elections were boycotted
by at least one opposition party, leaving a large number of cases where the opposition
decided to participate despite the apparent electoral incentives to boycott (Buttorff,2011).
Furthermore, within authoritarian countries, the decision to participate or boycott is far
from constant. Opposition groups rarely boycott every election, participating in some
years, boycotting in others.
Consider, for example, the case of Jordan. The Islamic Action Front (Jabhat al-‘Amal
al-Islami, or IAF) boycotted both the 1997 and 2010 parliamentary elections. The stated
rationale in each case was opposition to sawt wahid, the single non-transferable vote
(SNTV) electoral system. The change to the electoral law, issued by King Hussein in
1993 while parliament was out of session, is widely recognized to have disadvantaged
the electoral prospects of opposition parties in general, and the IAF in particular. The
IAF’s decision to boycott the election would thus seem to support the existing theories
of electoral boycotts. Jordan, however, held five elections under SNTV between 1993
and 2010. If boycotts respond to electoral factors, why did the IAF decide to participate
in 1993, the first election under the new rule? And why, after the decision to boycott in
1997, did the IAF return to participation in 2003 and 2007 when the stated reason for the
boycott remained unchanged?
Explaining the variation seen in Jordan, and in other authoritarian regimes, requires
looking at non-electoral factors. Boycotts take place in an electoral context, but they are
not only about elections (Schedler, 2002b). Explaining the incidence of boycotts then
requires a model that embeds boycotts in the larger context of authoritarian elections
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