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Essay: Autocratic regimes

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  • Published: 15 September 2019*
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  • Words: 1,154 (approx)
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A countless number of ruling political regimes in Africa, North Korea, Russia, Turkey, among many others are still autocratic in nature. But what’s interesting is that these autocratic regimes have established themselves in the international community as a masquerade of institutional democracy using the ballot system of “elections”. In this essay, I will illustrate how not all elections are democratic, and why autocratic regimes feel the need to liberalize and confidently hold elections. A key question I hope to answer is- If autocratic elections are not competitive, what function do they perform?  My argument will delve into how these “elections”, instead of serving the purpose of political accountability, have been strategically calculated to gain international validation, showcase power, and divide opponents by gaining information about support bases and opposition.
​An autocratic regime is controlled by a single person who has extreme power vested in him/her. In an autocratic regime, pluralism is vanished or extremely limited, the judiciary is not independent, and the media is controlled by the ruling regime. The autocrat is able to successfully infringe and abuse civil liberties owing to little mass mobilization. To understand this further, we will take a look at Zimbabwe’s ex-President Robert Mugabe’s autocratic regime of 30 long years. Mugabe won an overwhelming majority of the ballot in a “free and fair election” while serving as an autocratic leader, even though he repeatedly defied the judiciary and abused civil liberties by granting amnesty to ruling party supporters who were murderers. This raises the question- What made Robert Mugabe bold enough to hold elections and how did he win them? To answer to this question, we look at an article written by Gandhi and Przeworski, which states that “the instruments by which nondemocratic rulers solicit cooperation and thwart threats of rebellion include policy concessions and distribution of spoils.” Controversial policy modifications such as one introduced by Mugabe in 2000 that led to the seizure of white-owned farms, transferring them to black Zimbabwean ownership, certainly earned him many votes but caused a large decline in productivity. To Mugabe’s favor, this policy concession prevented uprising threats to his power and allowed him to share the “spoils of office” with his supporters. It can be inferred that such a decision would aid Mugabe in dividing opponents by bringing them into the system and giving them salaries as members of Parliament and therefore fragmenting the opposition.
Just like other democratic institutions, autocratic regimes have aced the techniques of control over the electoral process by either “vote-buying”, or the use of “intimidation”. Research conducted by Frye, Reuter, and Szakonyi (2018), proves how pressure from “employers” in United Russia forces employees to vote for Vladimir Putin, as they fear to lose their jobs owing to withdrawal threats of state-owned contracts. However, why would President Putin invest resources into holding and winning elections if the results were secured through dishonest measures? One of the principle reasons could be that elections would prevent the Russian government from being questioned regarding legitimacy from international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). A similar deceptive scheme can also be seen in Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds elections to gain information about support bases of his own and opponents’ regime, and public attitude towards the ruling regime. This could help him identify what parts of Turkey and what groups of people support his government. Once such information is collected it is easy to suppress opposing local leaders. The article “Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats”, is an eyeopener for many as it elaborates cunning reasons as to why elections are held in autocratic regimes. One of the reasons written by Cardoso (1979, p. 48) who observes this in Latin America is that such elections are held to portray how strong the current leader is and therefore to discourage opponents.
Elections are a hallmark of democracy and a double-edged sword for autocratic leaders. As Gandhi & Przeworski state, “dictators are dictators because they cannot win competitive elections because their preferences diverge from those of the majority of the population.” (pg 1281). So, the reason why autocracies such as North Korea and Turkmenistan welcome them despite its risks is very interesting. These countries have deviously held elections to gain information on who are the most popular politicians amongst the leaders’ group, potential threats, or who are corrupt officials. This allows their regime to penetrate and control society (Gershenson & Grossman, 2001). Additionally, autocrats conduct elections to make effective “power-sharing deal obliging the ruler to promote the rank-and-file to power positions with certain regularity.” This allows autocratic parties co-opt a large number of weaker players. I extend Beatriz Magaloni’s argument that the party leadership can make the distribution of these political positions and privileges conditional on some desired services and hence there will be strong incentives for the rank-and-file to join the ruling party. Privileges such as government salaries, access to jobs in state-owned enterprises, schooling and political connections make rank-and-file perform services and remain loyal over the long run. Services such as discipline supporters and deploy them into kinds of work and areas of the country they would prefer to avoid; reduce conflict among supporters; educate and socialize citizens to support the ideology and economic strategy favored by the regime are beneficial to the party and performed. For example, Presidential elections in Mexico thus took place every 6 years throughout the PRI’s history, making effective the power-sharing deal. Regular succession gave potential rivals within the ruling coalition an incentive to wait for their turn instead of scheming assassinations against the sitting president and each other. Finally, elections aid incumbents in maintaining their ties with elites by deterring defection among members of the ruling coalition. This is important as because of its control of weapons and men, the military is always a potential threat, even to dictators who are officers themselves.  Additionally, it will help to solve intra-regime conflicts that might otherwise end their own rule and possibly also destabilize the regime as well.
Elections can prove beneficial for autocratic regimes, as long as they can “control” the outcomes via vote-buying or intimidation, as this will help in the suppression of government criticism. It also promotes personal loyalty at the expense of public service, stunts the development of possible successors, reinforces the impression that only the current leader is fit to govern, and feeds a self-perpetuating fear of political change. I have come to conclude that elections are peacefully organized riots, in the sense that they influence potential opponents’ perceptions of how difficult it would be to attract enough popular support to unseat the ruler. However, a more thorough research needs to be done on how these elections are held to change social environments, influence the strategies of social movements and gender relations and representation. Only then can we can prove that an establishment of elections as a means by which dictators hold onto power is more durable than those without them.

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