EBP 1

 

Geddes B, Wright J, Frantz E. Why Parties and Elections in Dictatorships? In: How Dictatorships Work: Power, Personalization, and Collapse. Cambridge University Press; 2018:129-153.

The authors in this chapter are discussing the presence of democratic institutions in dictatorships, with a particular focus on why dictatorships still participate in elections where they are uncompetitive or there is predetermined outcome. This chapter argues that these institutions are implemented as a means of solving some of the key issues that crop up in dictatorships namely – policy implementation, monitoring local officials and information shortfalls that jeopardise the resilience of the regime and can give room for opposition to gain support. 

This chapter starts first by explaining that the ruling elite in dictatorships do not tend to be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the regime, and thus they must rely on the cooperation and loyalty of local officials in reaching the grassroots for many of the key aspects of the regime’s success. Information shortfalls are the main issue that the ruling elite run into, it is important that they have accurate information about any opposition to the regime, how their policies are being implemented and working, and what issues are arising for citizens in different parts of the territory. Without access to this information, it creates opportunities for opposition to the regime to garner support. The reliance on local officials in gaining this information is problematic, the loyalty of local officials is paramount because local officials who are sabotaging the regime are unlikely to provide accurate reports, and even loyal officials whose future is dependent on successful performance may refrain from reporting bad news or rise in opposition back to the ruling elite for fear they will be blamed and their career prospects thwarted. The author uses the example of regimes in China and Cambodia where there was mass starvation as a result of local officials’ reluctance to report policy failure. 

The argument here is that these regimes will use traditional democratic institutions such as parties, legislatures and elections as a means of solving these issues. 

Parties 

Formal political institutions such a political parties can act as a means of collecting information from ordinary citizens by expanding clientele networks that have a distributive and mobilizing effect to the grassroots. Parties create a structure for the social contract where of benefits such as salaries, career opportunities, favours, special access to goods and services etc are given in exchange for party support, by way of loyalty, effort and participation. Restricting official posts to party members helps to ensure loyalty of local officials and policy implementation as it creates a dependence on the ruling party that disincentivises sabotage and non-compliance. The ruling elite need party members to infiltrate society by creating clientele networks into the grassroots for information gathering purposes, but also in casting a wide net of people who benefit from the successful the regime and therefore support it. These institutions are a powerful tool for the ruling elite who have control over them in inner-circle competition and are agreed to by the other members of the inner-circle who may not directly benefit because their important role in securing the regime.  

There are some serious limitations to Parties and their fulfilment of their purpose, and the tasks assigned to them by the ruling elite because of numbers or training. The main issue with the role of Party’s is that the ability of the ruling elite to monitor the behaviour of party members holding local offices. And, where the task of distribution of resource is vested in these people it allows for theft, embezzlement and abuse of power that negatively affects the regime unless prevented in other ways. 

Legislature 

Legislatures play a similar role as party positions as it creates important and desirable positions that come with salaries and benefits, for the ruling elite to dole out, and party members to compete for, in order to motivate members and inspire loyalty and devotion to the regime. Although the author puts forward that based on the evidence legislatures have little influence on policy, that they do play a role in the allocation of private benefits and public goods on a local scale which creates a sense of prestige and sway for party members who are nominated for the position. 

Elections 

The use of election in dictatorship regimes is the key focus of this chapter. Elections in most dictatorships often allow voters some choice but take steps to prejudice the outcomes by prohibiting participation of important parties, restricting suffrage or creating structural advantages for the ruling party. The aim of the chapter is to answer the question, what are these elections for in regimes where there is a structurally unfair, or predetermined outcome? 

This chapter puts forward three main purposes as to why regimes of this kind even bother to partake in elections. The first is perhaps the reason elections were introduced to dictatorships on the scale they are now. It is due to is the strong connection between foreign aid and competitive elections following the end of the Cold War period in the 1980’s, democratic countries, particularly the United States have tied the amount of aid they are willing to provide to multiparty elections. Dictatorships that claim to be taking steps toward democracy by allow semi-competitive elections despite the skewed playing field, receive the most aid. But even these semi-competitive elections play no real role in deciding who will rule or dictating government strategy, thus this chapter argued that the real purpose the elections comes down to their two key functions. 

The first is the role of election in sending a message of the dictator’s strength aimed at the other ruling elite to deter any defections or opposition. This is because a big election win with large numbers of voter turnout, choice or no choice, demonstrates the capacity of the ruler to successfully mobilise the masses thus raising the perceived strength of the regime and probability of survival if an attempt at opposition was made. As Magaloni points out, in order for the elections to have this effect the voting turnout and counts need to be relatively honest. This sentiment is supported when looking at the reverse effects when an election is postponed, it signals to potential elite defectors that there is a weakness in the regime and that the dictator is afraid of defeat. Elections that are held at irregular intervals due to postponement are twice as likely to be followed by regime collapse and the presiding leaders more than twice as likely to be faced with death, imprisonment or exile post exit. It is clear that using tools to fix elections that provide a safer alternative to postponement. 

The second function of holding legislative and local elections is that it creates incentive for party officeholders to extend their clientele networks and ensure that benefits are genuinely being passed down to a grassroots level or risk losing when it comes to re-election. Competition in elections at this level is usually more intensive and requires ambitious party members to campaign and compete for roles, even where the partisan election was choice free. For example, the one-party rule in the Ivory Coast has competition for party nominations as a way of ensuring the system is responsive to the needs of the wider population. This benefits the ruling elite as it widens information-gathering networks and benefits the wider population as it works as an accountability mechanism to ensure their needs are being met, resources are being distributed properly and exploitation and brutality is disincentivised. In this way elections also act as an information gathering tactic for the ruling elite, with low voter turnout a clear manifestation of citizen discontentment in the locality which can signal to the ruling elite faults or misconduct of that local official 

A final interesting note on elections in these regimes is that both the competitive and non-competitive elections brought about a similar increase in spending. The authors of this chapter interpreted this to show that all elections incentivise the elites to demonstrate their control over resources required to hold power and party members to deliver benefits to the grassroots because of the competition for nominations for positions within the party, even where the election is non-competitive.