Political Behavior under Electoral Authoritarianism

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel examines how political behavior shapes and is shaped by elections in authoritarian contexts, drawing on theory and evidence from multiple regions in the Global South. A large literature in comparative politics establishes that elections in authoritarian contexts serve a variety of strategic purposes for incumbent regimes, ranging from gathering information and monitoring opposition to distributing and shuffling resources among the autocratic selectorate. Other scholars show, conversely, that authoritarian elections can be leveraged by opposition actors and movements to shift the balance of power in favor of non-incumbents. Collectively, these contributions to the comparative politics literature highlight the importance of electoral institutions and electoral behavior therein, even in contexts where electoral integrity, fairness, or competitiveness is compromised.

Our panel builds on this line of scholarship by investigating the incentives, challenges, and opportunities citizens navigate in electoral authoritarian contexts. Using a variety of experimental and observational evidence from original data collection across the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, our panel participants highlight the ways in which elections in non-democratic contexts can alter and be altered by citizens’ attitudes and behavior. We also highlight how non-electoral forms of action, including protest participation, can feed into electoral processes and behavior. Tavana, Parreira, and Walsh use micro-level panel data on elections and protest activity in Lebanon to show how a national protest wave shaped patterns of opposition voting, arguing that protests – counter to much existing theory and evidence – served to limit identity-based polarization in a context otherwise dominated by identitarian political parties. Aytaç, Çalışır, and Söylemez-Karakoç similarly focus on polarization in the Turkish context, where they leverage experimental evidence to show that exogenous decreases in affective polarization dampens support for candidates who promote anti-democratic norms. Beardsworth, Gkounta, and Harris, meanwhile, look to the regime-side of authoritarian elections in Zimbabwe, where they demonstrate the broad array of techniques governing elites use to retain electoral dominance beyond repression and intimidation. Finally, Li and Chin also look at regime behavior to show that electoral politics – including anticipation of elections and their actual occurrence – significantly impact coup risk.

Sub Unit

• Division 44: Democracy and Autocracy

Individual Presentations

• Anti-sectarian Mobilization and Lebanon’s New Electoral Opposition - Daniel L. Tavana, Penn State; Christiana Parreira, Geneva Graduate Institute; Sara Walsh, Penn State

• Affective Polarization & Democratic Attitudes: Experimental Evidence from Turkey - S. Erdem Aytaç, Koç University; Seda ÇALIŞIR; Busra Soylemez-Karakoc, Koc University

• Electoral Campaign Strategies and Information Embeddedness in Zimbabwe - Nicole Beardsworth, University of Pretoria; Ioanna Gkoutna, University College London; Adam Harris, University College London

• Scheduling Coups: Election Calendar and Coup Risk in Autocracies - Jia Li, Utah State University; John Joseph Chin, Carnegie Mellon University

Chair

• Rachael McLellan University of Glasgow

Discussants

• Christiana Parreira Geneva Graduate Institute

• Rachael McLellan University of Glasgow