Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:43:40.710Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Economic Performance and Elite Defection from Hegemonic Parties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2010

Ora John Reuter  and
Jennifer Gandhi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Hegemonic party regimes are non-democratic regimes that (1) rule with the aid of a dominant political party and (2) hold multi-party elections. Elite coalitions organized under the aegis of a hegemonic party are most vulnerable in elections that coincide with poor economic performance. A declining economy provides elites with a platform around which they can mobilize support to challenge incumbents in elections. As a result, the likelihood of defections from hegemonic parties increases as income declines. This study’s original dataset, which includes 227 elections for the chief executive in hegemonic party dictatorships from 1946 to 2004, and its case studies of defections in Zimbabwe under ZANU-PF in 2008 and Turkey under the Democratic Party in 1955 provide evidence for this proposition.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 83 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Bratton, Michael and Van de Walle, Nicolas, ‘Neopatrimonial Regimes and Political Transitions in Africa’, World Politics, 46 (1995), 453–489CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Geddes, Barbara, ‘Authoritarian Breakdown: Empirical Test of a Game Theoretic Argument’ (prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 1999)Google Scholar; Gandhi, Jennifer and Przeworski, Adam, ‘Cooperation, Cooptation, and Rebellion under Dictatorships’, Economics and Politics, 18 (2006), 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Magaloni, Beatriz, ‘Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule’, Comparative Political Studies, 41 (2008), 715–741CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wright, Joseph, ‘Do Authoritarian Institutions Constrain? How Legislatures Affect Economic Growth and Investment’, American Journal of Political Science, 52 (2008), 322–343CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Huntington, Samuel, ‘Social and Institutional Dynamics of One-Party Systems’, in Samuel Huntington and Clement Moore, eds, Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society: The Dynamics of Established One-Party Systems (New York: Basic Books, 1970)Google Scholar; Magaloni, Beatriz, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brownlee, Jason, Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Geddes, , ‘Authoritarian Breakdown’; Dan Slater, ‘Iron Cage in an Iron Fist: Authoritarian Institutions and the Personalization of Power in Malaysia’, Comparative Politics, 36 (2003), 81–101Google Scholar; Smith, Benjamin, ‘Life of the Party: The Origins of Regime Breakdown and Persistence under Single Party Ruler’, World Politics, 57 (2005), 421–451CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization.

4 See Gasiorowski, Mark, ‘Economic Crisis and Political Regime Change: An Event History Analysis’, American Political Science Review, 89 (1995), 882–897CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Geddes, ‘Authoritarian Breakdown’.

5 O’Donnell, Guillermo and Schmitter, Philippe, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Przeworski, Adam, Democracy and the Market (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haggard, Stephan and Kaufman, Robert, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

6 Geddes, , ‘Authoritarian Breakdown’; Smith, ‘Life of the Party’Google Scholar.

7 Eisenstadt, Todd, Courting Democracy in Mexico: Party Strategies and Electoral Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Greene, Kenneth, Why Dominant Parties Lose: Mexico’s Democratization in Comparative Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Magaloni, , Voting for Autocracy; Magaloni, ‘Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule’Google Scholar.

9 See O’Donnell, and Schmitter, , Transitions from Authoritarian Rule; Przeworski, Democracy and the MarketGoogle Scholar.

10 Bratton, Michael and Van de Walle, Nicolas, Democratic Experiments in Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bunce, Valerie, ‘Rethinking Recent Democratization: Lessons from the Post-Communist Experience’, World Politics, 55 (2003), 167–192CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Haggard, and Kaufmann, , The Political Economy of Democratic TransitionsGoogle Scholar; Wood, Elizabeth Jean, Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

12 Magaloni, , Voting for Autocracy; Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization; Magaloni, ‘Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule’Google Scholar.

13 Teichman, Judith, Policy Making in Mexico: From Boom to Crisis (Boston, Mass.: Allen and Unwin, 1988)Google Scholar.

14 Langston, Joy, ‘Breaking Out is Hard to Do: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty in Mexico’s One-Party Hegemonic Regime’, Latin American Politics and Society, 44 (2002), 61–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p76).

15 Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy.

16 Langston attributes elite ruptures in the PRI as well as the KMT in Taiwan to increased electoral competition and succession crises; Langston, Joy, ‘Elite Ruptures: When Do Ruling Parties Split?’ in Andreas Schedler, ed., Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition (Boulder, Col.: Lynne Rienner, 2006), pp. 57–76Google Scholar. Analysing the same cases, Haggard and Kaufman find no relationship between crisis and elite defection in dominant party autocracies while finding substantial case-study evidence for the linkage in Latin American military regimes (Haggard and Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions).

17 See Gasiorowski, , ‘Economic Crisis and Political Regime Change’Google Scholar; and Boix, Carles and Stokes, Susan, ‘Endogenous Democratization’, World Politics, 55 (2003), 517–549CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 However, we did conduct a separate analysis which shows that defections have a positive effect on the probability of a hegemonic regime losing power.

19 Levitsky, Steven and Way, Lucan A., ‘The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism’, Journal of Democracy, 13 (2002), 51–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schedler, ed., Electoral Authoritarianism.

20 Brownlee, , Authoritarianism in an Age of DemocratizationGoogle Scholar.

21 We use the terms ‘hegemonic party’ and ‘dominant party’ interchangeably throughout the text.

22 Sartori, Giovanni, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy; Greene, Kenneth, ‘The Political Economy of Authoritarian Single Party Dominance’, Comparative Political Studies, 43 (2010), 1–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reuter, Ora John and Remington, Thomas, ‘Dominant Party Regimes and the Commitment Problem: The Case of United Russia’, Comparative Political Studies, 42 (2009), 501–526CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 While we have theoretical foundations for the 50 per cent cut point, we also examine whether the choice of threshold affects our results by including an interaction term between economic growth and the seat share of the dominant party in the statistical analysis. In this way, rather than impose an ex ante criterion, we allow the data to ‘speak’ as to whether the choice of threshold affects the results. The results, to be discussed, show that the size of the hegemonic party’s legislative majority does not condition the effect of growth on defections.

24 Magaloni, , Voting for Autocracy; Greene, ‘The Political Economy of Authoritarian Single Party Dominance’Google Scholar.

25 As with the choice of seat share threshold, we examine whether durability affects the results and is thereby justified as a criterion, by including an interaction term between duration and growth in the statistical analysis. As we show, the age of the hegemonic party does not appreciably affect the substantive results.

26 Reuter, and Remington, , ‘Dominant Party Regimes and the Commitment Problem’Google Scholar.

27 Kasara, Kimuli, ‘A Prize Too Large to Share: Opposition Coalitions and the Kenyan Presidency, 1991–2002’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 2005)Google Scholar.

28 Singh, Hari, ‘Political Change in Malaysia: The Role of Semangat 46’, Asian Survey, 31 (1991), 712–728CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Blaydes, Lisa, ‘Electoral Budget Cycles under Authoritarianism: Economic Opportunism in Mubarak’s Egypt’ (prepared for the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, 2006)Google Scholar.

30 While the literature on economic voting includes a large debate on this point, there is some evidence that voters evaluate incumbents based on economic performance. See, for example, Lewis-Beck, Michael, Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Remmer, Karen, ‘The Political Impact of Economic Crisis in Latin America in the 1980s’, American Political Science Review, 85 (1991), 777–800CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Powell, G. Bingham Jr and Whitten, Guy, ‘A Cross-National Analysis of Economic Voting: Taking Account of the Political Context’, American Journal of Political Science, 37 (1993), 391–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pacek, Alexander and Radcliff, Benjamin, ‘The Political Economy of Competitive Elections in the Developing World’, American Journal of Political Science, 39 (1995), 745–759CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duch, Raymond and Stevenson, Randy, ‘Assessing the Magnitude of the Economic Vote over Time and Across Nations’, Electoral Studies, 25 (2005), 528–547CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Apter, David, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1965), p. 186Google Scholar.

32 Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy.

33 Greene, ‘The Political Economy of Authoritarian Single Party Dominance’.

34 Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy.

35 Bardhan, Pranab, ‘Corruption and Development: A Review of Issues’, Journal of Economic Literature, 35 (1997), 1320–1346Google Scholar; Mauro, Paolo, ‘Corruption and Growth’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110 (1995), 681–712CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Singh, , ‘Political Change in Malaysia’, p. 714Google Scholar; Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization.

37 Alesina, Alberto, Özler, Sule, Roubini, Nouriel and Swagel, Phillip, ‘Political Instability and Economic Growth’, Journal of Economic Growth, 1 (1996), 189–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Przeworski, Adam, Alvarez, Michael, Cheibub, José Antonio and Limongi, Fernando, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-being in the World, 1950–1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Since we cannot gather information on all legislative candidates in parliamentary regimes, we look only at the founders and leaders of parties in parliamentary regimes. If the founders and/or leaders of an opposition party were members of the hegemonic party prior to the election, this counts as a defection.

40 For information on the sources used for all variables in the analysis, see the author’s webpage: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~oreuter/Reuter_Site/Home.html

41 We recognize that this coding rule may exclude instances in which a potential defector challenges the regime with the precise goal of being expelled. But we choose not to code these cases as defection, for admitting such cases would also oblige us to include regime-initiated purges in which notable party members are simply expelled against their own will.

42 We also test the effect of long-run economic growth (i.e. the average growth rate over the life of the hegemonic party) and one-year lag of economic growth. As we discuss below, the results are highly similar.

43 Marshall, Monty G. and Jaggers, Keith, Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2002. Version p4v2002e [Computer File]. College Park: Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland, 2002URL: http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/index.htmGoogle Scholar.

44 If there is no prior presidential election, we take the regime party’s vote total in the prior legislative election. In the first elections after single-party rule, Previous Vote receives a value of 100. In the first elections after independence, we take the hegemonic party’s vote share in elections for territorial or colonial assemblies.

45 Howard, Marc Morje and Roessler, Philip G., ‘Liberalizing Electoral Outcomes in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes’, American Journal of Political Science, 50 (2006), 365–381CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Cox, Gary, Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World’s Electoral Systems (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hug, Simon, Altering Party Systems: Strategic Behavior and the Emergence of New Political Parties in Western Democracies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. We cannot measure the spatial location of candidates and parties in authoritarian elections. But arguably, policy differences among opposition parties in dictatorships hardly play a role in electoral campaigns, since realistically these parties have little chance to implement their platforms (Howard, and Roessler, , ‘Liberalizing Electoral Outcomes in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes’, p. 371Google Scholar).

47 Recent studies using cross-national electoral data with low country (N) to time-period (T) ratios such as ours (3.8 elections per hegemonic party) have settled on this approach (see Golder, Matthew, ‘Presidential Coattails and Legislative Fragmentation’, American Journal of Political Science, 50 (2006), 34–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hicken, Allen, Building Party Systems in Developing Democracies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Including a lagged dependent variable to correct for serial autocorrelation within units is impractical given the large number of observations that would be lost and the uneven spacing between elections. Even so, models that include Past Defections (a measure of whether a hegemonic party has experienced a defection at some time in the past) as a control variable reveal little indication of temporal dependence.

48 However, reverse causation is possible in that a defection may affect the vote share of an incumbent in the contemporaneous election. Also, this variable is highly correlated with both Polity and Previous Vote. Indeed, when removing Vote Share from Model 2, Previous Vote becomes significant. Therefore, in most of the subsequent models we use Previous Vote in place of Vote Share to circumvent the endogeneity problems posed by Vote Share.

49 The importance of opportunity structure in determining the likelihood of defection raises the issue of endogenous elections. If dictators anticipate elite defections from their coalitions in upcoming elections, they can cancel elections, opening the possibility for selection effects that may bias our results. Upon investigating cancelled elections, we found that dictators in party regimes cancel elections very infrequently. In Africa, for example, scheduled elections were cancelled only four times (i.e. Angola 1997 and 2002, Burkina Faso in 1974, and Guinea-Bissau in 1992). Given the rarity of cancelled elections, we choose not to use a selection model because the skewness of the dependent variable in the first stage (cancelled elections) will produce highly inefficient and possibly biased estimates of covariates that affect the decision to hold elections and of the Inverse Mill’s Ratio. In addition, since the severity of selection bias is directly proportional to the percentage of the sample that is truncated, we are sanguine about the robustness of our results in the face of potential selection bias.

50 The model shown includes only Sub-Saharan Africa as a control variable. In other results, we tested other regional dummies and found them to be collectively insignificant.

51 Geddes, Barbara, ‘What Do We Know about Democratization after Twenty Years?’ Annual Review of Political Science, 2 (1999), 115–144CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 We are grateful to Joseph Wright for providing his update of Geddes’s regime classification from Wright, ‘Do Authoritarian Institutions Constrain?’

53 We also attempted to proxy the propensity of the regime to use repression with a variable that measures the number of ‘purges’ in a given year, where purges are defined as any systematic jailing or execution of political opposition by the regime. See Banks, Arthur, Cross-National Time Series Data Archive 〈http://www.databanksinternational.com/32.html〉 (2005). This variable was not significantGoogle Scholar.

54 See, for example, Powell, and Whitten, , ‘A Cross-National Analysis of Economic Voting’Google Scholar; Anderson, Christopher, ‘The End of Economic Voting? Contingency Dilemmas and the Limits of Democratic Accountability’, Annual Review of Political Science, 10 (2007), 271–296CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duch, Raymond M. and Stevenson, Randolph, Economic Vote: How Political and Economic Institutions Condition Election Results (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Hellwig, Timothy and Samuels, David, ‘Electoral Accountability and the Variety of Democratic Regimes’, British Journal of Political Science, 38 (2008), 65–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Magaloni, , Voting for Autocracy; Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization.Google Scholar

57 Haggard, and Kaufman, , The Political Economy of Democratic TransitionsGoogle Scholar; Bunce, Valerie, Subversive Institutions: The Design and Destruction of Socialism and the State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 We also examined this alternative hypothesis by including per capita income. The coefficient on income is never significantly different from 0 while the effects of other variables remain substantively unchanged.

59 Gerring, John, Case Study Research: Principles and Practices (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

60 Historical accounts suggest that the elections were marred by irregularities. Moreover, the elections were called early so as to exploit the opposition’s inability to organize. Although the official results were never made public, the CHP retained a commanding parliamentary majority. See Bahrampour, Firouz, Turkey: Political and Social Transformation (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Theo. Gaus’ Sons, 1967), p. 20Google Scholar; Karpat, Kemal, Turkey’s Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959)Google Scholar.

61 Karpat, , Turkey’s Politics, p48Google Scholar.

62 Erogul, Cem, ‘The Establishment of Multi-party Rule: 1945–1971’, in Irvin C. Schick and Ertugrul Ahmet Tonak, eds, Turkey in Transition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 108Google Scholar.

63 That this act was not a ‘morally justified’ component of a lustration programme against the RPP is confirmed by the fact that the DP waited until mid 1951 to take these measures and that the resolution was not implemented at first, but only held out as a threat to keep the CHP in check. Only when the DP recognized the CHP as an endemic threat did it move to confiscate the party’s assets (Erogul, , ‘The Establishment of Multi-party Rule’, p. 108)Google Scholar.

64 Weiker, Walter F., The Turkish Revolution: 1960–1961 (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1963), p. 10Google Scholar.

65 As Weiker, The Turkish Revolution, points out, where the laws were not inherently anti-democratic, their selective interpretation and enforcement were.

66 Erogul, , ‘The Establishment of Multi-party Rule’, p. 111Google Scholar.

67 The party won 93 per cent of the seats in the legislative assembly.

68 Karpat, Kemal, ‘The Turkish Elections of 1957’, Western Political Quarterly, 14 (1961), 436–459CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Robinson, Richard, The First Turkish Republic: A Case Study in National Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 150CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 For more on the origins of Turkey’s economic difficulties in 1954–55, see The Economist, 2 July 1955 and 24 December 1955.

71 See Karpat, , Turkey’s Politics; Karpat, ‘The Turkish Elections of 1957’; and Robinson, The First Turkish Republic, on the conditions leading up to the crisisGoogle Scholar.

72 Ahmad, Feroz, The Making of Modern Turkey (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Karpat, , Turkey’s Politics, p. 424Google Scholar.

74 Karpat, , Turkey’s Politics, pp. 424–6Google Scholar.

75 The party faced difficulties building a national organization and fared poorly in the general elections of October 1957, winning 3.7 per cent of the vote and four seats. Months later the party merged with CHP.

76 Some sources suggest that the DP was adopting more and more authoritarian practices in 1954 and 1955; see Karpat, ‘The Turkish Elections of 1957’, and Weiker, The Turkish Revolution. We readily acknowledge the difficulty in determining whether the Freedom party defections occurred because dissatisfaction with the DP’s growing authoritarianism reached some tipping point in 1955 or whether it was due solely to the economic crisis. We can only re-emphasize that the timing of Celikhbas’s decision to introduce the draft amendment, and the subsequent split from the party came just weeks after the September Istanbul riots, which occurred in response to the economic crisis.

77 ZANU was Mugabe’s original party, incorporating the Patriotic Front shortly before independence. This alliance briefly broke down during the 1980 elections when the PF’s original leader, Joshua Nkomo, contested the elections as PF-ZAPU while Mugabe campaigned under the partisan label of ZANU-PF.

78 Kriger, Norma, ‘ZANU(PF) Strategies in General Elections, 1980–2000: Discourse and Coercion’, African Affairs, 104 (2005), 1–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sachikonye, Lloyd, ‘The 1990 Zimbabwe Elections: A Post-Mortem’, Review of African Political Economy, 48 (1990), 92–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 Richardson, Craig, ‘How Much Did Droughts Matter? Linking Rainfall and GDP Growth in Zimbabwe’, African Affairs, 106 (2007), 463–478CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 Bratton, Michael and Masunungure, Eldred, ‘Popular Reactions to State Repression: Operation Murambatsvina in Zimbabwe’, African Affairs, 106 (2006), 21–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 ‘Industries: Zimbabwe’, Africa Research Bulletin: Economic, Financial and Technical Series, 44 (July 2007).

82 ‘Power: Zimbabwe’, Africa Research Bulletin: Economic, Financial and Technical Series, 44 (March 2007); Latham, Brian, ‘Zimbabwe Currency Plunges to Four Million to the U.S. Dollar’, International Herald Tribune, 5 December 2007, http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/04/bloomberg/bxzim.php, downloaded 10 February 2008Google Scholar.

83 Winter, Joseph, ‘Simba Makoni: Zimbabwe’s Roaring Lion?’ BBC News, 5 February 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7228205.stm, downloaded 10 February 2008Google Scholar.

84 Winter, ‘Simba Makoni’.

85 Taylor, Darren, ‘Former ZANU-PF Heavyweight Prepares to Challenge Mugabe’, Voice of America, 19 March 2008, http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/Former-ZANU-PF-Heavyweight-Prepares-to-Challenge-Mugabe.cfm, downloaded 20 March 2008Google Scholar.

86 Mpofu, Patricia, ‘MDC Welcomes New Mugabe Challenger’, ZimOnline, 6 February 2008, http://www.zimonline.co.za/Article.aspx?ArticleId=2671, downloaded 10 February 2008. Makoni reputedly had the support of former army chief and major party figure Solomon Mujuru, whose wife was vice-president along with other members of ZANU-PF (Winter, ‘Simba Makoni’)Google Scholar.

87 Chirinda, Simplicious, ‘Surprise, Disbelief Greets Makoni’s Bid for Presidency’, ZimOnline, 6 February 2008, http://www.zimonline.co.za/Article.aspx?ArticleId=2667, downloaded 10 February 2008Google Scholar.

88 Magaloni, , Voting for AutocracyGoogle Scholar.

89 Smith, , ‘Life of the Party’Google Scholar.