Electoral Volatility and Regime Survival in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes

43 Pages Posted: 15 Feb 2022

See all articles by Wooseok Kim

Wooseok Kim

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Michael Bernhard

University of Florida

Allen Hicken

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor - Department of Political Science

Date Written: February 15, 2022

Abstract

Party system institutionalization is regarded as a critical underpinning of democracies, but its role in non-democratic systems has been understudied. In this paper, we evaluate whether the concept has meaningful and perhaps unique implications for the durability of competitive authoritarian regimes. We argue that electoral volatility—the most common measure of party system institutionalization in democracies—conveys useful information in competitive authoritarian contexts by signaling the ability of the ruling party to manage the opposition, but note that it needs to be refined to be applicable to such contexts. To this end, we construct an original data set that disaggregates electoral volatility into ruling party seat change and opposition party seat volatility, and further divide opposition party volatility into Type-A and Type-B volatility. We find robust results that democratization becomes more likely when decreases in the ruling party’s seat share are accompanied by opposition party Type-B volatility. This paper demonstrates that the concept of party system institutionalization can be useful for making sense of regime dynamics even in non-democratic contexts.

Suggested Citation

Kim, Wooseok and Bernhard, Michael and Hicken, Allen, Electoral Volatility and Regime Survival in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes (February 15, 2022). V-Dem Working Paper 129, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4035271 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4035271

Wooseok Kim (Contact Author)

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Michael Bernhard

University of Florida ( email )

Allen Hicken

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor - Department of Political Science ( email )

Ann Arbor, MI 48109
United States

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