Liberalizing Electoral Outcomes in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes

Marc Morjé Howard and Philip G. Roessler

American Journal of Political Science, 2006, vol. 50, issue 2, 365-381

Abstract: In the wake of the third wave of democratization, competitive authoritarianism has emerged as a prominent regime type. These regimes feature regular, competitive elections between a government and an opposition, but the incumbent leader or party typically resorts to coercion, intimidation, and fraud to attempt to ensure electoral victory. Despite the incumbent's reliance on unfair practices to stay in power, such elections occasionally result in what we call a “liberalizing electoral outcome” (LEO), which often leads to a new government that is considerably less authoritarian than its predecessor. Using a “nested” research design that employs both cross‐national statistical analysis and a case study of Kenya, we seek to explain how and why LEOs occur. Our findings highlight in particular the importance of the choices made by opposition elites to form a strategic coalition for the purpose of mounting a credible challenge to the ruling party or candidate in national elections.

Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00189.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:amposc:v:50:y:2006:i:2:p:365-381

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Journal of Political Science from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().