Why parties and elections in authoritarian regimes

Subsequently, although the civilian government was replaced by dictatorships or by military rule after a coup-d'etat, the political institutions including electoral and parliamentary systems, in most cases, were not removed, because elimination of such institutions would significantly damage the legitimacy of the current political administration. Those in power utilize the political party as a vehicle to propagate the regime's ideology among the citizenry and to create a base of political support Binder In addition, it is not unusual for the ruling powers to "produce" elections to "demonstrate" that they were chosen by the people, allowing the participation of other political parties under limitations.

This also has the effect of dividing moderate and hard-line opposition groups, thereby weakening the entire opposition to the regime Lust-Okar However, such illegitimate elections can also trigger mass protests that may even result in regime change, as seen in the cases of the Philippines, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan.

How, then, do political parties and elections of democracies in developing regions differ from those in the United States and Europe? In election results , it becomes difficult to see how the relations between political parties reflect the interests of and value systems of the societies.

Rather, they appear as comprehensive conflicts that can be characterized as establishment vs. The reasons for this are 1 the absence of a homogeneous working class Dix , 2 the need for coalition-building due to the large numbers of ethnic, religious, sectarian, and language groups Mozaffar, Scarritt, and Galaich , 3 the fact that the transition to a multiple-party system was made under universal suffrage in contrast with the United States and Europe, where suffrage was gradually extended within a multi-party system , each of the emerging parties tries to appeal to all the social groups Hazama Thus, for example, as Bader has demonstrated in his study of the Duma elections - in those commissions chaired by members of United Russia, the reported levels of turnout and support for UR were much higher than in those chaired by members of other parties Bader, , p.

The Kremlin has also been able to maintain its dominance in the regions by manipulating election and party laws. Indeed, since Putin came to power in , no election in Russia has been held according to the same rules as its predecessor and there have been scores of amendments to election and party legislation in the regions. As Hutcheson notes, over the period —16, the State Duma law was amended 40 times; the Law on Political Parties 36 times, and the Law on Fundamental Guarantees of Electoral Rights, 78 times , pp.

In the wake of the mass protest demonstrations against the regime, radical changes to electoral and party registration laws were adopted in Spring , which made it much easier for parties to register and participate in elections. According to these amendments the number of party members required for registration was drastically reduced from 40, to just !

Federal Law 28, 2 April, As a result of this new legislation the number of parties rose sharply from 7 in to 74 in September This has led to the creation of a weak and fragmented opposition see Ross, In 48 parties took part in the regional elections, in there were 55 parties and in , According to amendments made to Federal Law, No.

However, in the aftermath of the mass demonstrations which erupted in , positive changes were made to electoral legislation in which stipulated that party list candidates no longer needed to submit nomination signatures to register for elections, and the maximum number of signatures required by independent candidates was lowered from 2 to 0. These developments made it easier for opposition parties to pass the registration hurdles.

In the first two rounds of regional elections to be conducted under the new rules, in October and September , there was a dramatic reduction in the number of party lists which were prevented from competing.

The average number of registered party lists per region rose from Thus, in new legislation was adopted which reversed many of the positive changes enacted in see Borisov et al.

Thus, for example, in May the requirement of party list candidates to collect nomination signatures was reinstated although the percentage of signatures required was lowered from 2 to 0. At the same time, the number of signatures demanded for candidates in the single mandate elections was raised from 0. One positive feature adopted by Federal Law No.

However, the registration process is not a level playing field. The non-parliamentary opposition party Yabloko also qualified for the elections held between and as it won 3. The reinstatement of the need to gather nomination signatures in resulted in a sharp fall in the average number of party lists which were registered for regional assembly elections, from Scores of opposition candidates and party lists have been unable to register for elections because the electoral commissions have declared their signatures invalid.

Thus, for example, candidates were denied registration because they wrote the date or signed their name in the wrong place on their nomination forms, or because of other equally petty mistakes made by the collectors of the signatures see Ross, , Some candidates have failed to be registered because the information they provided on their documents did not tally with information sometimes of doubtful authenticity held in the data-bases of the electoral commissions and the Federal Migration Service.

Thus, for example, in an absurd example was found in municipal elections in Rostov Region. Overall In the figure was In , In this round of elections there were three regions where over half the party lists were rejected. Orel In the total numbers of party lists that were rejected was Of the 57 party lists which were nominated in total across all regions , 38 had electoral privileges and did not need to gather signatures and 36 of these party lists were registered, whilst just 10 of the 19 party lists without privileges were able to compete.

The highest number of party lists which were rejected in was in Krasnodar Krai Likewise, in the parties which did not need to collect signatures were able to register almost all of their candidates United Russia Patriots of Russia was able to register In comparison the liberal opposition party Yabloko was only able to register 42 of its 65 candidates, and none of the candidates from the liberal coalition PARNAS, were able to take part in the elections www.

Up until November , in a majority of regions, half of the deputies to regional assemblies were elected in party list elections and half in single mandate races. However, amendments to Federal Law No. Table 1 shows that a total of However, for those parties with privileges who did not need to submit nomination signatures the corresponding figures were just 2.

In sharp contrast, if we examine the opposition candidates who were without privileges we see that the number of those who were denied registration was much higher comprising; Independent, candidates also fared badly with In , not a single party that had to collect signatures was registered in 15 of the 34 regional elections.

Whilst in some cases parties and candidates have correctly been denied access to the elections because they failed to comply with the rules governing the nomination and registration process, in many others cases they have deliberately been targeted by the Kremlin which has used its control over the electoral commissions to prevent them from participation in the elections.

As noted above, in virtually all of the cases, the reason for candidates being denied registration was due to problems with the documentation relating to their nomination signatures. However, it only succeeded in registering them in Kostroma, after an initial decision to ban them in that region was overturned on appeal Litvinova, , p.

Rodina lost half of its party lists in the registration process. With regard to PARNAS and Renaissance of Russia, initially all of their lists were rejected and it was only after the intervention of the Central Electoral Commission that both parties were allowed to register one of their lists the Renaissance of Russia party later withdrew from the elections.

Finally, Party Action was not registered in the Sakhalin region Golos, a , b , p. In United Russia won an average of The Communists came in second in and , and they were third in , but they were a long way behind UR with just In sharp contrast, for the other parties, their percentage of party list seats was lower than their percentage of votes see Table 2.

Turning to the single mandate races, United Russia won even more seats in these elections than in the party list contests. As can be seen in Table 3 , UR swept the board in the single mandate races, winning a total of seats, which is higher than the seats it won in the party list elections. In sharp contrast the other members of the systemic opposition all fared much worse in the single mandate races than they did in the party list contests.

It is important to note that these victories for UR came at a time when the country was in the midst of a major economic recession. As discussed below, low turnout may gradually undermine the legitimacy of the regime. New legislation was adopted in which reintroduced direct elections for regional governors.

The municipal filter has enabled the Kremlin to squeeze out popular opposition candidates from the ballot and control who will be able to stand in the elections.

Thus, for example, an average of The most serious barrier to the registration of opposition candidates, is the simple fact that the vast majority of local councils are dominated by members of United Russia and this makes it extremely difficult for candidates not approved by the party to gather the required signatures to be registered. As Golos c , p. Thus, for example, Vasily Pronichev a member of the opposition party, Patriots of Russia who stood in the a - d election in Irkutsk, was able to collect the necessary number of signatures, but because these were not from a sufficient number of municipalities, he did not fulfil the territorial quota and thus, was not able to submit them for registration.

Sergey Zhuravsky, a candidate from the party Rodina who sought to compete in the Kaliningrad region, in , wrote a letter to the Regional Electoral Commission where he noted that he was unable to submit his documents because the deputies who supported his nomination were too scared to disclose their names.

They feared that they may be subjected to persecution for daring to support his candidacy. Many of them were afraid of being laid off from work, as they are dependent for employment on the regional administration Ibid. Often opposition candidates are faced with the absurd task of having to turn to United Russia to ask for help in collecting signatures.

In this case UR declined his appeals for help in collecting signatures Ibid. In some cases, a candidate may be promised signatures by deputies who have already given them to someone else. According to the authorities, the municipal filter is ostensibly there to prevent candidates who have little support in the regions from standing in the elections.

However, as Golos has shown, the filter process has not succeeded in screening out unpopular candidates and parties a , p. At the same time, in each round of elections there are a number of senior opposition politicians who are denied participation in the elections even although or because they command potentially high levels of electoral support. All of these factors have led to a situation whereby United Russia under the command of the Kremlin decides which opposition candidates will be allowed to enter the registration stage and ultimately who will compete against them.

However, one negative feature of removing popular candidates from elections is that it leads to lower turnout, which in turn undermines regime legitimacy.

Thus, for example, in every gubernatorial election in , except for that in Sverdlovsk, the turnout was lower than in the previous election Kynev et al. UR also won all 7 of the elections in in Tula an independent candidate was supported by UR and all 16 elections in In support for UR varied from In the lowest level of support for the winner was In victories for UR candidates were also very high.

The highest levels of support were in Mordovia The lowest levels of support were in Tomsk Piracy Reporting Form. How to Manage your Online Holdings. Sales Managers and Sales Contacts. Ordering From Brill. LibLynx for Selected Online Resources. Discovery Services. Online User and Order Help. MARC Records. Titles No Longer Published by Brill. Latest Key Figures. Latest Financial Press Releases and Reports. Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. Share Information.

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By applying a variety of statistical techniques to a comprehensive dataset on post-World War II elections, this study shows that under competitive authoritarianism, elections are less likely to be party-structured than in democracies, and that competitive authoritarian party systems are markedly less sustainable and durable than systems in the other categories, especially in democracies.

These findings are in accordance with the theory according to which competitive authoritarian institutions are epiphenomena, reflecting the distribution of power in the polity but not shaping it. Their emergence and survival are consequences rather than causes of the stability and success of contemporary autocracies. Agresti Alan Categorical Data Analysis 2nd ed. New York Wiley. Aldrich John H. Why Parties? Anderson Margaret L.