Sustaining Democracy under the Shadow of Force

Abstract

We develop a dynamic model to examine the sustainability of democracy and its potential challenges. Two political parties seek to control the office of government through either elections or force. Democracy is sustained if both parties rely on competitive elections to decide who is in office. At each time, the incumbent party chooses the probability it would peacefully remain in office and redistributes incomes. We show that competitive elections are a useful yet costly tool for the incumbents: useful in preventing inefficient conflicts but placing at risk control over redistribution. Democracy can fail in two ways. One is peaceful backsliding, which occurs when the incumbent can avoid a violent conflict without holding competitive elections. Another is violent breakdown, when the incumbent chooses not to hold competitive elections expecting the control over office to be decided by force. The main result is that democracy is sustained when capacity of the state to redistribute incomes is moderate, so that control over office entails a stake that is neither too low, rendering competitive election inconsequential, nor too high, rendering parties unwilling to risk office in competitive elections. We further derive and discuss the conditions under which partisan and civilian control of military facilitate or hinder the sustainability of democracy.