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Better Turn the Other Cheek: The Tragedy of Electoral Boycott and Protest
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53 cases, 14 progressed to become electoral and liberal democracies
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with the eventual break down
of two. While 19 have stayed electoral autocracies over more than one electoral cycle, five arepending a second election. 15 electoral autocracies have broken down, notably 14 of these after thefounding election. Only in Ivory Coast did an electoral autocracy ever break down after secondelections had been held. In short, electoral authoritarian regimes in Africa seem to survive if theymake it to second elections. But when do they become electoral or liberal democracies? Doesopposition behavior play a significant role in facilitating such a development? Under electoralauthoritarianism does opposition behavior contribute to democratization or does it only lendlegitimacy to autocrats in electoral disguise?
The Effects of Opposition Behavior
If we couple the classification of regimes as in Table 2, with the data on opposition behavior fromTable 3, we can display a chart of electoral autocracies as in Figure 1. This is in effect a panel-groupcomparison of opposition participation and losers’ acceptance. In total 53 electoral authoritarianregimes have held elections over the period studied. Starting from the bottom of the figure, as perJune 2003 a smaller number (five) of these had just recently taken off and we know nothing abouttheir future prospects. These make the first panel group but are therefore left as “pending”. Thesecond panel group consists of the 15 electoral autocracies that have broken down suffering from acoup, a civil war, or similar. In the elections preceding these breakdowns, all opposition partiesparticipated in nearly half and accepted the outcome in 44 percent of the cases. In other words,opposition participation and acceptance of results does not seem to safeguard against breakdown.This is corroborated by the fact that the level of opposition participation and acceptance has beenalmost exactly the same for the third panel group made up by the 19 electoral autocracies that have(so far) reproduced themselves holding two or more elections. Not much differentiate these twooutcomes in these panel groups. In short, electoral authoritarianism can be reproduced even whenthe opposition parties and candidates chose to participate fully and even accept the outcome ofsometimes-dubious elections. Yet, nothing in the behavior of the opposition in this regard seems toprevent a breakdown of the process.
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One case – Benin – oscillated between electoral authoritarian and democratic but given the benign political development
in the country it has been judged to be better classified as having ‘graduated’ rather than stayed electoral authoritarian forthe purposes of the following statistical analysis.
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| | Authors: Lindberg, Staffan. |
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8
53 cases, 14 progressed to become electoral and liberal democracies
8
with the eventual break down
of two. While 19 have stayed electoral autocracies over more than one electoral cycle, five are
pending a second election. 15 electoral autocracies have broken down, notably 14 of these after the
founding election. Only in Ivory Coast did an electoral autocracy ever break down after second
elections had been held. In short, electoral authoritarian regimes in Africa seem to survive if they
make it to second elections. But when do they become electoral or liberal democracies? Does
opposition behavior play a significant role in facilitating such a development? Under electoral
authoritarianism does opposition behavior contribute to democratization or does it only lend
legitimacy to autocrats in electoral disguise?
The Effects of Opposition Behavior
If we couple the classification of regimes as in Table 2, with the data on opposition behavior from
Table 3, we can display a chart of electoral autocracies as in Figure 1. This is in effect a panel-group
comparison of opposition participation and losers’ acceptance. In total 53 electoral authoritarian
regimes have held elections over the period studied. Starting from the bottom of the figure, as per
June 2003 a smaller number (five) of these had just recently taken off and we know nothing about
their future prospects. These make the first panel group but are therefore left as “pending”. The
second panel group consists of the 15 electoral autocracies that have broken down suffering from a
coup, a civil war, or similar. In the elections preceding these breakdowns, all opposition parties
participated in nearly half and accepted the outcome in 44 percent of the cases. In other words,
opposition participation and acceptance of results does not seem to safeguard against breakdown.
This is corroborated by the fact that the level of opposition participation and acceptance has been
almost exactly the same for the third panel group made up by the 19 electoral autocracies that have
(so far) reproduced themselves holding two or more elections. Not much differentiate these two
outcomes in these panel groups. In short, electoral authoritarianism can be reproduced even when
the opposition parties and candidates chose to participate fully and even accept the outcome of
sometimes-dubious elections. Yet, nothing in the behavior of the opposition in this regard seems to
prevent a breakdown of the process.
8
One case – Benin – oscillated between electoral authoritarian and democratic but given the benign political development
in the country it has been judged to be better classified as having ‘graduated’ rather than stayed electoral authoritarian for
the purposes of the following statistical analysis.
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