Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-44mx8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-19T03:38:36.543Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ruling Parties in Authoritarian Regimes: Rethinking Institutional Strength

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2019

Anne Meng Open the ORCID record for Anne Meng [Opens in a new window]
Anne Meng*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A key finding in the literature on authoritarian regimes is that leaders frequently rely on ruling parties to stay in power, but the field lacks systematic ways to measure autocratic party strength. As a result, it is not clear how often ruling parties are actually strong and capable of carrying out important functions. This article demonstrates that strong ruling parties are much rarer than is typically assumed. Using a global sample of dictatorships from 1946–2008, the author shows that most ruling parties are unable to survive the death or departure of the founding leader. This is true even of many ruling parties that have been coded as leading single-party regimes. While strong parties may be key to durable authoritarianism, relatively few parties are truly strong.

Keywords

authoritarian regimeruling partyparty strengthcomparative political institutionsmeasurement
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 526 - 540
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adamolekun, L (1976) Sékou Touré Guinea. London: Methuen & Co.Google Scholar
Akindès, F (2004) The Roots of the Military-Political Crises in Côte d'Ivoire. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute.Google Scholar
Basedau, M (2008) Measuring Party Institutionalization in Developing Countries: A New Research Instrument Applied to 28 African Political Parties. Working Paper. Hamburg: GIGA.Google Scholar
Bienen, H and Van de Walle, N (1989) Time and power in Africa. American Political Science Review 83 (1), 19–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blaydes, L (2010) Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak's Egypt. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boix, C and Svolik, M (2013) The foundations of limited authoritarian government: institutions, commitment, and power-sharing in dictatorships. The Journal of Politics 75 (2), 300–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brownlee, J (2007) Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camara, M (2005) His Master's Voice: Mass Communications and Single Party Politics in Guinea Under Sékou Touré. Trenton: Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Crassweller, R (1966) Trujillo: The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Fearon, J and Laitin, D (2003) Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil War. American Political Science Review 97 (1), 75–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frantz, E and Stein, E (2017) Countering coups: leadership succession rules in dictatorships. Comparative Political Studies 50 (7), 935–962.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gandhi, J (2008) Political Institutions Under Dictatorship. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gandhi, J and Przeworski, A (2007) Authoritarian institutions and the survival of autocrats. Comparative Political Studies 40 (11), 1279–1301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gandhi, J and Sumner, JL (2017) Measuring Personalism in Non-Democracies. Paper presented at the International Methods Colloquium.Google Scholar
Geddes, B (1999a) Authoritarian Breakdown: Empirical Test of a Game Theoretic Argument. Paper presented at the APSA Meeting in Atlanta, GA.Google Scholar
Geddes, B (1999b) What do we know about democratization after twenty years?. Annual Review of Political Science 2 (1), 115–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geddes, B (2003) Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geddes, B (2008) Party Creation as an Authoritarian Survival Strategy. Working Paper. Los Angeles: University of California.Google Scholar
Geddes, B, Wright, J and Frantz, E (2014) Autocratic regimes and transitions. Perspectives on Politics 12 (2), 313–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gehlbach, S and Keefer, P (2011) Investment without democracy: ruling-party institutionalization and credible commitment in autocracies. Journal of Comparative Economics 39 (2), 123–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gehlbach, S and Keefer, P (2012) Private investment and the institutionalization of collective action in autocracies: ruling parties and legislatures. Journal of Politics 74 (2), 621–635.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goemans, HE, Gleditsch, KS and Chiozza, G (2009) Introducing archigos: a dataset of political leaders. Journal of Peace Research 46 (2), 269–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, KF (2007) Why Dominant Parties Lose: Mexico's Democratization in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huntington, S (1968) Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, R and Rosberg, C (1982) Personal Rule in Black Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janda, K (1980) Political Parties: A Cross-National Survey. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Keefer, P (2007) Governance and economic growth in China and India. In Winters, A and Yusuf, S (eds), Dancing with Giants. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications, pp. 211–242.Google Scholar
Keefer, P (2008) Insurgency and credible commitment in autocracies and democracies. World Bank Economic Review 22 (1), 33–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kokkonen, A and Sundell, A (2017) The King is Dead: Political Succession and War in Europe, 1000–1799. University of Gothenburg, Working Paper Series.Google Scholar
Kricheli, R (2008) Information Aggregation and Electoral Autocracies: An Information-Based Theory of Authoritarian Leaders’ Use of Elections. Working Paper. Palto Alto, CA: Stanford University.Google Scholar
Levitsky, S (1998) Institutionalization and Peronism: the concept, the case and the case for unpacking the concept. Party Politics 4 (1), 77–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitsky, S and Murillo, MV (2009) Variation in institutional strength. Annual Review of Political Science 12 (1), 115–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitsky, S and Way, L (2010) Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitsky, S and Way, L (2013) The durability of revolutionary regimes. Journal of Democracy 24 (3), 5–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Londregan, J and Poole, K (1990) Poverty, the coup trap, and the seizure of executive power. World Politics 42 (2), 151–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lucardi, A (2017) Authoritarian Party Institutionalization. Paper presented at the American Political Science Association Meeting in San Francisco, CA.Google Scholar
Lust-Okar, E (2006) Elections under authoritarianism: preliminary lessons from Jordan. Democratization 13 (3), 456–471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lust-Okar, E (2007) Structuring Conflict in the Arab World: Incumbent, Opponents, and Institutions. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Magaloni, B (2006) Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magaloni, B (2008) Credible powering sharing and the longevity of authoritarian rule. Comparative Political Studies 41 (4), 715–741.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magaloni, B and Kricheli, R (2010) Political order and one-party rule. Annual Review of Political Science 13, 123–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magaloni, B, Chu, J and Min, E (2013) Autocracies of the World, 1950–2012 (Version 1.0). Dataset. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.Google Scholar
Mainwaring, S and Scully, T (eds) (1995) Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Malesky, E and Schuler, P (2010) Nodding or needling: analyzing delegate responsiveness in an authoritarian parliament. American Political Science Review 104 (3), 382–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisner, M (1986) Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Meng, A (2019) Replication Data for: Ruling Parties in Authoritarian Regimes: Rethinking Institutional Strength, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/7H6XQO, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:eOyuf9qFQd0UTNycoFVy4Q== [fileUNF].Google Scholar
North, D and Weingast, B (1989) Constitutions and commitment: the evolution of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth-century England. The Journal of Economic History 49 (4), 803–832.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pande, R and Udry, C (2006) Institutions and development: a view from below. In Blundell, R, Newey, W and Persson, T (eds), Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Theory and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 349–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Panebianco, A (1988) Political Parties: Organization and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pepinsky, T (2014) The institutional turn in comparative authoritarianism. British Journal of Political Science 44 (3), 631–653.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, J and Thyne, C (2011) Global instances of coups from 1950 to 2010: a new dataset. Journal of Peace Research 48 (2), 249–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Randall, V and Svasand, L (2002) Party institutionalization in new democracies. Party Politics 8 (1), 5–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reuter, OJ (2017) The Origins of Dominant Parties: Building Authoritarian Institutions in Post-Soviet Russia. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simmons, J (2016) The Politics of Technological Progress: Parties, Time Horizons and Lon-Term Economic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slater, D (2003) Iron cage in an iron fist: authoritarian institutions and the personalization of power in Malaysia. Comparative Politics 36 (1), 81–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slater, D (2010) Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svolik, M (2012) The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogt, M et al. (2015) Integrating data on ethnicity, geography, and conflict: the ethnic power relations data Set family. Journal of Conflict Resolution 59 (7), 1327–1342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, M and Wright, J (2017) Autocratic legislatures and expropriation. British Journal of Political Science 47 (1), 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, J (2008) Do authoritarian institutions constrain? How legislatures affect economic growth and investment. American Journal of Political Science 52 (2), 322–343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Meng Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/7H6XQO
Link
Supplementary material: File

Meng supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Meng supplementary material(File)
File 189.7 KB