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

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CHAPTER 6 (1999a) classified dictatorships into personalist, military, single-party, and their hybrids, and showed that single-party dictatorships are less likely to break down and democratize than the remaining categories of dictatorship. Research on an institutionally related category of dictatorship – dominant or hegemonic party regimes – similarly concludes that these regimes are particularly robust, even in the face of economic crises and popular opposition (Brownlee 2007; Magaloni 2006; Smith 2005; Slater 2003). In a complementary line of research, Gandhi and Przeworski (2007) report that leaders in single-party regimes survive longer in office, and I showed in Chapter 4 that leadership in dictatorships with parties is less likely to be deposed by non-institutional means, such as coups and popular uprisings. Even when singleanddominantpartydictatorshipsdemocratize, formerpartyelitesfrequentlyshapethe transition process and, in many cases, continue to maintain economic and political influence (Grzyma̷la-Busse 2002, 2007). How does the institution of the party facilitate the survival of dictatorships? In spite of this growing body of research and the emerging consensus that parties contribute to authoritarian resilience, we still lack a precise statement of the political mechanism by which particular organizational features of authoritarian parties account for the resilience of dictatorships with single or dominant parties. Consider two prominent views of how authoritarian parties affect the survival of dictatorships. According to one view, parties are the vehicles through which the regime rewards its supporters (Geddes 1999b; Gandhi 2008). This political exchange is typically called cooptation and frequently takes the form of patronage (Blaydes 2010; Magaloni 2006). Yet dictatorships without parties also commonly appease popular discontent via policy concessions or material handouts, and patronage networks pervade many societies, operating both within 2
CHAPTER 6 and outside of authoritarian parties (see e.g. Bratton and Van de Walle 1997; Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007; Van de Walle 2001). What makes authoritarian parties such particularly apt vehicles for the cooptation of the masses? According to another prominent view, authoritarian parties facilitate cooperation and prevent factionalism among the regime’s elites (Brownlee 2007; Geddes 1999b; Magaloni 2006). According to Geddes (1999b; 2003), for instance, in single-party regimes “everyone is better off if all factions remain united and in office” (Geddes 2003, 59). Arguably, however, incentives to “stick together or hang separately” – to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin – gener- ically exist in most dictatorships. What is the mechanism by which authoritarian parties so uniquely maintain elite cohesion? In this chapter, I attempt to advance existing research onthe roleof parties inauthoritar- iangovernancebydeveloping argumentsthatexplaini)howandwhichspecificorganizational features of authoritarian parties contribute to authoritarian resilience, ii) why these benefi- cial functions could not be carried out without the institution of the party, and iii) why some dictatorships establish and maintain a regime-sanctioned party while others do not. I identify three organizational features of successful authoritarianparties that account for the effectiveness of parties as instruments of authoritarian cooptation, both at the mass and elite level. These features are hierarchical assignment of service and benefits, political control over appointments, and selective recruitment and repression. Crucially, these features of in- ternal party organization accomplish much more than simply distribute rewards in exchange for party members’ support of the regime, as the existing literature often concludes. Rather than fora for political exchange, authoritarian parties are better thought of as institutional- ized incentive structures that encourage sunk political investment by their members, which 3
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Bibliography Abrami, Regina, Edmund
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Press. BIBLIOGRAPHY Dickson, Bruce
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tution. BIBLIOGRAPHY Huntington, Sa
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Central Committee and
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World Bank. 2008. World Development
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