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Authoritarian Institutions and Regime Survival: Transitions to Democracy and Subsequent Autocracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2011

Joseph Wright  and
Abel Escribà-Folch
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Abstract

This article examines how authoritarian parties and legislatures affect regime survival. While authoritarian legislatures increase the stability of dictators, political parties – even when devised to quell internal threats – can destabilize dictators. The main argument is that authoritarian parties influence the distribution of power in a subsequent new democracy by helping to protect the interests of authoritarian elites. These institutions thus increase the likelihood of democratization. Using a dataset of authoritarian regimes in 108 countries from 1946 to 2002 and accounting for simultaneity, the analysis models transitions to democracy and to a subsequent authoritarian regime. Results indicate that authoritarian legislatures are associated with a lower probability of transition to a subsequent dictatorship. Authoritarian parties, however, are associated with a higher likelihood of democratization.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , 29 February 2012 , pp. 283 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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60 If the control for Military regime is excluded from the specification, legislatures decrease the likelihood of democratization, a finding consistent with Hypothesis 2.

61 Predicted probabilities calculated from Models 6 and 9 in Table 3, respectively. We use CLARIFY and set Cold War to zero with all other variables set to their mean or median values. For CLARIFY, see Tomz, Michael, Wittenberg, Jason and King, Gary, ‘Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation’, American Journal of Political Science, 44 (2000), 347–361Google Scholar. For each regime type, we set the duration variables to the in-sample mean value for each regime type. For military regimes, this value is 7, for personalist regimes 12, and for party regimes 20. The instrument for parties () is a continuous variable, so we take the median from the distribution of 's that lies below the first cut-point (zero parties); the median between the cut-point (one party); and the median from the distribution of 's that lies above the second cut-point (two parties). For , we use the median for the subset of 's that lie below the mean predicted value as ‘no legislature’ and the median for the subset of 's that above below the mean predicted value as ‘legislature’. These latter values are close to the 25 percentile and the 75 percentile of the distribution of 's.

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68 In a random effects specification, though, these coefficients are statistically significant at the 0.10 level.

69 We did not estimate separate samples for military and party-based regimes because nearly all party regimes have a legislature.

70 There are many fewer observations for military regimes than for dominant party regimes, reflected in the larger standard error estimate for Parties in military regimes.

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72 Goemans, Gleditsch and Chiozza, ‘Introducing Archigos’. The Archigos data are episode data, with one observation per leader per country. The Archigos variable Post Tenure Fate indicates the fate of the leader in the period up to one year after the leader lost power: 0 (OK), 1 (Exile), 2 (Imprisonment, including house arrent) or 3 (Death).

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74 The results in columns 5 and 6 remain if we exclude those regimes that have regularized leadership turnover: Brazil (1964–85), El Salvador (1948–82), Mexico (1929–2000), Uruguay (1973–84) and Tanzania (1986–2002/censored).

75 Geddes, ‘Authoritarian Breakdown’; Boix, Democracy and Redistribution; Smith, ‘Life of the Party’; Magaloni, Beatric, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and Its Demise in Mexico (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gandhi and Przeworski, ‘Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats’; Brownlee, Authoritarianism in the Age of Democratization; Gandhi, Political Institutions Under Dictatorship; Magaloni, ‘Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule’; Wright, ‘Do Authoritarian Institutions Constrain?’

76 Gandhi and Przeworski, ‘Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats’; Magaloni, ‘Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule’; Geddes, ‘Party Creation as an Autocratic Survival Strategy’. For a view which parallels ours, see Cox, Gary, ‘Authoritarian Elections and Leadership Succession, 1975–2000’ (unpublished paper, Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego)Google Scholar.

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79 See, for example, Moustafa, Tamir, The Struggle for Constitutional Power: Law, Politics, and Economic Development in Egypt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 Most of the sub-Saharan Africa dominant party regimes in Table 1 have not fared well in the post-transition period. However, some former authoritarian parties in personalist regimes in this region have met with some electoral success. For example, the NDC in Ghana finished a strong second in 2004 and the MPC in Malawi finished a strong second in 1999 and won in 2004. This underscores the need to measure the relationship between the leader and the party more precisely than a dummy variable for Personalist regimes.

81 Peceny, Beer and Sanchez-Terry, ‘Dictatorial Peace?’; Reiter and Stam, ‘Identifying the Culprit’; Weeks, Jessica, ‘Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling Resolve’, International Organization, 62 (2008), 35–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wright, ‘Do Authoritarian Institutions Constrain?’ Fjelde, Hanne, ‘Generals, Dictators, and Kings: Authoritarian Regimes and Civil Conflict, 1973–2004’, Conflict Management and Peace Science, 27 (2010), 195–218CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Michael Albertrus, ‘Political Regimes and Poverty Reduction, 1950–2002’, presented at the Midwest Political Science Association meeting, Chicago, 2009.

82 Jackson and Rosberg, Personal Rule in Black Africa; Huntington, ‘How Countries Democratize’; Bratton and van de Walle, ‘Patrimonial Regimes and Political Transitions in Africa’; Geddes, ‘Authoritarian Breakdown’.

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