Undemocratic Elections under Democracy

Abstract

This paper uses a game-theoretic model to analyze the conditions for a "truly democratic election" in a democratic system, in which the people choose one of the two candidates, the incumbent (ruling party) and the opposition party, through an election. This research obtains the following three major findings. First, when the military's coup cost is low, the opposition candidate cannot be a "feasible true alternative" for the citizens. Second, if the cost of a military coup is high and the political preferences of the ruling and opposition parties are somewhat close, the opposition becomes the viable real alternative and a democratic system is realized. Third, if the policy preferences of the citizens and ruling party are sufficiently close to those of the opposition, the ruling party will have a greater need to appeal to populism in order to get itself reelected in the election.

Keywords: Democracy, Truly democratic elections, Three-player model, Populism, Feasible true alternative, Regime maintenance cost JEL Codes: C72

JEL Classification: C72, D72, I38