Note
Studied by 20 peoplePOLI107 week 3 reading 2 - Levisky and Way's 'the rise of competitive authoritarianism' 2002
The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism
Introduction
The post-Cold War era saw the rise of hybrid political regimes, combining democratic rules with authoritarian governance.
These regimes are present in Africa, post-communist Eurasia, Asia, and Latin America.
Initially, scholars viewed these regimes as transitional democracies, but many remained hybrid or became more authoritarian.
It's time to analyze these regimes as distinct types rather than as democracies in transition.
Many labels have emerged for these mixed cases, including "hybrid regime," "semidemocracy," and "electoral authoritarianism."
Much of the literature has a democratizing bias, treating mixed regimes as partial democracies or transitions to democracy.
However, some regimes have moved in an authoritarian direction or remained stable, making the term "transitional" misleading.
Terms like "semidemocratic" are often used as residual categories, obscuring important differences among regime types.
Hybrid regimes differ in their historical roots and implications for economic performance, human rights, and prospects for democracy.
Defining Competitive Authoritarianism
Competitive authoritarianism is a specific type of hybrid regime where formal democratic institutions are the main means of obtaining and exercising political authority.
However, incumbents violate these rules frequently, failing to meet minimum standards for democracy.
Examples include Croatia under Franjo Tudjman, Serbia under Slobodan Miloševiæ, Russia under Vladimir Putin, and others.
While some scholars see these regimes as diminished democracies, they may be better described as a diminished form of authoritarianism.
Competitive authoritarianism is different from both democracy and full-scale authoritarianism.
Modern democratic regimes have these minimum criteria:
Executives and legislatures are elected through open, free, and fair elections.
Virtually all adults have the right to vote.
Political rights and civil liberties are protected, including freedom of the press and freedom of association.
Elected authorities have real authority to govern, not subject to military or clerical control.
Democratic regimes may violate these criteria at times, but not enough to impede democratic challenges.
In competitive authoritarian regimes, violations are frequent and serious, creating an uneven playing field.
Elections are held regularly, but incumbents abuse state resources, deny media coverage to the opposition, harass candidates, and manipulate results.
Journalists and opposition politicians may be spied on, threatened, or arrested.
Opposition members may be jailed, exiled, or assaulted.
Regimes cannot be called democratic with these abuses.
Competitive authoritarianism is different from unstable regimes that still meet basic democratic standards.
Guillermo O’Donnell's "delegative democracies" have low horizontal accountability but meet minimum standards for democracy, unlike competitive authoritarian regimes.
While competitive authoritarian regimes fall short of democracy, they also fall short of full-scale authoritarianism.
Incumbents manipulate democratic rules but cannot eliminate them entirely.
Instead of openly violating rules, they use bribery, co-optation, and legal persecution to control critics.
Despite the stacked odds, democratic institutions create arenas for opposition challenges.
Competitive authoritarianism is different from "façade" electoral regimes where elections are meaningless, which are considered full-scale authoritarianism.
Distinguishing between these types can be hard, but it's important to differentiate regimes where the opposition can seek power through democratic institutions from those where rules legitimize autocratic leadership.
Competitive authoritarianism shouldn't be seen as encompassing all hybrid regimes.
Other types include "exclusive republics" with restrictive citizenship laws and "tutelary" democracies where non-democratic actors have veto power.
Four Arenas of Democratic Contestation
Meaningful democratic institutions in competitive authoritarian regimes create arenas for opposition forces to challenge incumbents.
Four important arenas: the electoral arena, the legislature, the judiciary, and the media.
The Electoral Arena
In authoritarian regimes, elections don't exist or are not seriously contested.
Opposition parties are banned or disqualified, and leaders are jailed.
Independent observers are prevented from verifying results, allowing for widespread vote stealing.
Opposition forces don't pose a threat, and elections are noncompetitive.
In competitive authoritarian regimes, elections are bitterly fought.
The electoral process is characterized by abuses of power, biased media, harassment, and lack of transparency.
Elections are regularly held, competitive, and generally free of massive fraud.
International observers and parallel vote-counting limit large-scale fraud.
Elections generate uncertainty, and incumbents must take them seriously.
Opposition forces have defeated autocratic incumbents in some cases.
Incumbents who manipulate election results face consequences, such as resignation or removal.
The Legislative Arena
In full-scale authoritarian regimes, legislatures don't exist or are controlled by the ruling party.
In competitive authoritarian regimes, legislatures are weak but can become focal points of opposition.
This is particularly likely when incumbents lack strong majority parties.
Legislatures can block or water down legislation proposed by the executive.
Incumbents may attempt to circumvent or shut down the legislature, but this is costly.
Even with large legislative majorities, opposition forces can use the legislature to organize and denounce the regime.
The Judicial Arena
Governments in competitive authoritarian regimes attempt to subordinate the judiciary through impeachment, bribery, and extortion.
In some cases, governments resort to threats and violence.
However, judicial independence and incomplete control by the executive can give judges an opening.
Courts have protected media and opposition figures from state persecution.
Punishing judges who rule against the government may generate costs in domestic and international legitimacy.
The Media
The media are a central point of contention in competitive authoritarian regimes.
In autocracies, the media are state-owned, censored, or repressed.
In competitive authoritarian regimes, independent media outlets are legal and influential.
Journalists are threatened but often emerge as important opposition figures.
Independent media outlets play a critical watchdog role, exposing government malfeasance.
Media outlets may also serve as mouthpieces for opposition forces.
Executives in competitive authoritarian regimes often seek to suppress the independent media through bribery, manipulation, and restrictive press laws.
Efforts to repress the media may be costly to incumbents.
Inherent Tensions
Authoritarian governments may coexist indefinitely with meaningful democratic institutions by limiting opposition challenges without provoking massive protest.
However, the coexistence of democratic rules and autocratic methods creates instability.
Elections, legislatures, courts, and media create opportunities for opposition challenges.
Repressing challenges is costly, but incumbents could lose power if they let challenges run their course.
Periods of contestation force incumbents to choose between violating democratic rules (at the cost of isolation) and allowing the challenge to proceed (at the risk of defeat).
This often results in a regime crisis.
In some cases, incumbents weather the storm, while in others, governments fail to crack down and lose power.
Succession is not democratization.
Incumbent turnover may result in democratic transitions, but newly elected leaders may continue authoritarian practices.
The removal of autocratic elites creates an opportunity for regime change, but it doesn't ensure it.
In regions with closer ties to the West, the removal of autocratic incumbents has generally resulted in democratization.
Linkages to the West appear to have raised the costs of authoritarian entrenchment.
Where Western linkages were weaker, competitive authoritarian regimes were more likely to persist or move in a more authoritarian direction.
Paths to Competitive Authoritarianism
Competitive authoritarian regimes have proliferated in recent years.
They emerged from three different regime paths during the 1990s:
Decay of a full-blown authoritarian regime: Established regimes were compelled to adopt democratic institutions but fell short of democracy due to weak opposition movements.
Collapse of an authoritarian regime: Weak electoral regimes emerged in the wake of an authoritarian breakdown.
Decay of a democratic regime: Political and economic crises led elected governments to undermine democratic institutions.
The roots of this proliferation lie in the difficulties associated with consolidating both democratic and authoritarian regimes in the post–Cold War period.
Democratic regimes remained difficult to establish or sustain in countries with poverty, inequality, weak states, and institutional instability.
However, building full-scale authoritarian regimes was also difficult due to the post–Cold War international environment.
Western liberalism's triumph created incentives for states to adopt democratic institutions.
Periods of liberal hegemony place constraints on nondemocratic governments.
Counter-hegemonic powers can weaken these constraints by providing alternative sources of legitimacy.
The 1990s marked a period of Western liberal hegemony, increasing the benefits of adopting democratic institutions.
Emerging autocrats also confronted domestic impediments to consolidating authoritarian regimes, such as resource scarcity and uncertain hierarchical control.
Some regimes overcame these obstacles, while others lacked the means to co-opt or repress opponents.
Competitive authoritarian regimes were most likely to emerge where conditions were unfavorable to the consolidation of either democratic or authoritarian regimes.
Conceptualizing Nondemocracies
It is important to move beyond the "transition paradigm" and study the emergence and persistence of nondemocratic regimes.
Western liberal hegemony, global economic change, and the growth of international networks have reshaped the opportunities facing authoritarian elites.
Some forms of authoritarianism have become more difficult to sustain.
New nondemocratic regime types have gained importance, including competitive authoritarianism.
Research on these outcomes is critical to understanding the alternatives open to post–Cold War transitional regimes.
Footnotes
*Terry Lynn Karl, “The Hybrid Regimes of Central America,” *Journal of Democracy* 6 (July 1995): 72-87
*William Case, “Can the ‘Halfway House’ Stand? Semidemocracy and Elite Theory in Three Southeast Asian Countries,” *Comparative Politics* 28 (July 1996): 437-64
*Richard A. Joseph, “Africa, 1990–1997: From Abertura to Closure,” *Journal of Democracy* 9 (April 1998): 3–17
*Larry Diamond, *Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation* (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)
*Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” *Foreign Affairs* 76 (November– December 1997): 22–41
*Thomas Carothers, *Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve* (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999)
*Gordon P. Means, “Soft Authoritarianism in Malaysia and Singapore,” *Journal of Democracy* 7 (October 1996): 103–17
*Andreas Schedler, “Mexico’s Victory: The Democratic Revelation,” *Journal of Democracy* 11 (October 2000): 5–19
*M. Steven Fish, “Authoritarianism Despite Elections: Russia in Light of Democratic Theory and Practice,” paper prepared for delivery at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 30 August–2 September 2001.
*See David Collier and Steven Levitsky, “Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research,” *World Politics* 49 (April 1997): 430–51
*See Jeffrey Herbst, “Political Liberalization in Africa after Ten Years,” *Comparative Politics* 33 (April 2001): 357–75
*Thomas Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” *Journal of Democracy* 13 (January 2002): 5–21
*Juan J. Linz, *Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes* (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 34.
*See Scott Mainwaring, Daniel Brinks, and Aníbal Pérez Linan, “Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America, 1945–1999,” *Studies in Comparative International Development* 36 (Spring 2001). This definition is consistent with what Larry Diamond calls “mid-range” conceptions of democracy (Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy, 13–15).
*Obviously, the exact point at which violations of civil and political rights begin to fundamentally alter the playing field is difficult to discern and will always be open to debate. However, the problem of scoring borderline cases is common to all regime conceptualizations.
*Guillermo O’Donnell, “Delegative Democracy,” *Journal of Democracy* 5 (January 1994): 55–69
*Larry Diamond, *Developing Democracy*, 15–16
*Richard Joseph, “Africa, 1990–1997”
*Jason Brownlee, “Double Edged Institutions: Electoral Authoritarianism in Egypt and Iran,” paper presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 30 August–2 September 2001.
*Philip G. Roeder, “Varieties of Post-Soviet Authoritarian Regimes,” *Post-Soviet Affairs* 10 (January–March 1994): 61–101
*In Kenya, government-backed death squads were responsible for large-scale violence, particularly in ethnic minority areas. See Joel Barkan and Njuguna Ng’ethe, “Kenya Tries Again,” in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, eds., *Democratization in Africa* (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 185. Substantial violence against opposition forces was also seen in Serbia and Zimbabwe in the 1990s.
*See Keith Darden, “Blackmail as a Tool of State Domination: Ukraine Under Kuchma,” *East European Constitutional Review* 10 (Spring–Summer 2001): 67–71
*The Economist, 14 July 2001, 37.
*H. Kwasi Prempeh, “A New Jurisprudence for Africa,” *Journal of Democracy* 10 (July 1999): 138; Nebojsa Bjelakovic and Sava Tatic, “Croatia: Another Year of Bleak Continuities,” Transitions-on-Line, http://archive.tol.cz/countries/croar97.html (1997). Mikhail Diloyen, “Journalists Fall through the Legal Cracks in Armenia,” Eurasia Insight (June 2000).
*These dilemmas are presented in an insightful way in Andreas Schedler, “The Nested Game of Democratization by Elections,” *International Political Science Review* 23 (January 2002).
*For a more developed explanation, see Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, “Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regime Change in Peru and Ukraine in Comparative Perspective,” *Studies in Public Policy Working Paper No.* 355 (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde Center for the Study of Public Policy, 2001).
*On obstacles to authoritarianism in the former Soviet Union, see Philip G. Roeder, “The Rejection of Authoritarianism,” in Richard Anderson, M. Stephen Fish, Stephen E. Hanson, and Philip G. Roeder, *Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy* (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
*Andrew Janos, *East Central Europe in the Modern World: The Politics of Borderlands From Pre- to Postcommunism* (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000), 97–99
*Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, *Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective* (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 100.
*Thomas Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm.”
*See Richard Snyder, “Does Lootable Wealth Breed Disorder? States, Regimes, and the Political Economy of Extraction,” paper presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 30 August–2 September 2001. See also Juan J. Linz, *Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes*, 37.