Chapter 6 Why Authoritarian Parties? The Regime Party as an ...

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CHAPTER 6 These transfers frequently take the form of cash, subsidies, price regulation, land reform, or programmatic redistribution. 11 All such policies are in effect transfers of income from the government to a targeted segment of the population. For instance, in attempts to appease the masses during to the wave of protests that swept through the Middle East and North Africa at the beginning of 2011, Bahrain’s King Hamad ibn Isa al-Khalifa gave to each Bahraini family the equivalent of $2,650, the Syrian government of Bashar al-Asad froze electricity prices and announced a 72% rise in heating-oil benefits for public workers, and the Saudi government announced an increase in subsidies for new marriages, home owners, and businesses. 12 In order to explicitly contrast cooptation with and without a regime party, suppose that the dictator distributes via transfers an amount equivalent to his total net expenditures on partisan cooptation, b−c. That is, in any period, the dictator compensates each citizen’s support for the regime by a transfer in the amount of (b−c)/2. How much does a challenger have to offer to each citizen in order to attract both citizens’ support? Suppose that the challenger does not have a party and simply offers a period-by- period transfer to each of the two citizens. In the case of cooptation via transfers, the two citizens will be willing to join him if he offers each an equivalent transfer, that is at least (b − c)/2. Hence a challenger must have a budget of at least b − c in order to replace an incumbent who coopts via transfers. On the other hand, a challenger who would like to attract defectors from a dictator who coopts via a party has to consider not only their current costs and benefits but also the effect 11 Magaloni (2008) refers to these as “transfers on the spot”. 12 “Bahrain’s king gives out cash ahead of protests,” Reuters, 12 February 2011; “Hard choices for the government,” The Economist, 20 January, 2011; “Bahrain King in Saudi Arabia to discuss unrest,” The New York Times, 23 February 2011. 14
CHAPTER 6 Table 6.1: A comparison of cooptation via transfers and cooptation via a regime party Transfers Regime party per-period Current Expected Average Party rank payoff rank payoff lifetime payoff per-period payoff Senior Junior b−c 2 b b b b−c b−c −c b−c 2 2 of the party hierarchy on their incentives to defect. As in the setting without a party, the junior expects to receive b −c over the two stages of her career in the party and therefore has to be offered an average payoff of at least (b−c)/2 in each period in order to defect to the challenger. However, the senior now has to be offered at least b – the benefit she will obtain from the incumbent in the current period – in order to defect to the challenger. Thus with a hierarchical assignment of service and benefits within the party, the challenger must command greater resources in order to replace the incumbent dictator than if he were facing an incumbent without a party, b+(b−c)/2 > b−c. Or equivalently, the incumbent needs to command fewer resources in order to deter the same challenger when he coopts via a regime party. Table 6.1 contrasts the costs of coopting the two citizens with and without a regime party. By assigning costly service to the early stages of party members’ career and delaying the benefits of membership to the latter stages, the hierarchical structure of the party makes the incumbent dictator more resilient to potential challengers. Because they have already expended the costly service at the junior stage and only expect to reap the benefits, senior party members have a stake in the incumbent dictator’s survival that is absent in a regime that coopts without the institution of the party, even if the latter spend the same resources 15
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Page 55 and 56: Bibliography Abrami, Regina, Edmund
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Page 59 and 60: tution. BIBLIOGRAPHY Huntington, Sa
Page 61 and 62: BIBLIOGRAPHY Central Committee and
Page 63: World Bank. 2008. World Development

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